One of the nice things about winter? You can go for a walk in the woods and not be besieged by insects. But not all bugs are dormant during the cold months. As soon as the ground temperature gets above freezing, the tick that carries Lyme disease becomes active. If you can see mud, there could be hungry deer ticks out looking for lunch.
Anne Zajac is professor of parasitology at Virginia Tech. Her specialty is studying earthworms, but a couple of strange discoveries soon had her doing a ground breaking scientific field study about a different species.
“A few years ago because of finding an unusual tick on my own cat, I became interested in the ticks that were present in this area. Because in general it seems that the ticks have been changing in the last ten, fifteen years.
It had long been thought there was no Lyme disease in this part of Virginia. Even though cases had been reported in Floyd County, they were considered an anomaly. None had been reported in Giles or Montgomery. In 2009, when Mauricia Shanks came down with the symptoms of Lyme disease, after she pulled a tick off her leg in Giles, doctors told her, her aches, pains, fatigue and brain fog were likely the flu. She couldn’t get treatment for Lyme back then, even though she was certain she had it.
“The misery of this disease is unreal. It took everything I had. I couldn’t raise my arms to comb my own hair.”
Shanks, who owns a dog grooming business in Giles, was convinced she and many other people she knew had Lyme Disease but she had no way to prove it. That is, until Anne Zajac responded to her inquiry to Virginia Tech’s entomology department. Together, the worm researcher and the pet groomer went out to woods and grasslands in Giles and Pulaski Counties.
“We went collecting ticks by flagging for them where you drag a piece of cloth over vegetation and then pick the ticks off and collect them. We collected several hundred ticks. And we sent them to a colleague of mine, Dr. Susan Little, who received her veterinary degree from Virginia Tech. She’s now is now an internationally known tick expert at Oklahoma State University.”
Dr. Little confirmed that one in every 3 ticks they collected tested positive for the organism that causes Lyme disease.
“The research that we did highlighted that there are infected ticks in Giles and Pulaski counties, but if we had collected ticks from Montgomery County we would have found the same thing. As far as ticks are concerned those are pretty artificial borders.”
And their research found, there are not really any ‘off seasons’ for Lyme Disease carrying ticks.
“And this has been one of the big changes for people in this region because we have not been used to a tick that’s activein the winter time. And a deer tick, as long as it’s above freezing they can be out looking for food.”
Mauricia Shanks wasn’t treated for Lyme when she first came down with symptoms, and she’s says that’s why it has returned on one occasions and she believes it will again. Her experience sent her on a crusade to prove the ticks and the disease are rampant here – the region is now considered to have one of the highest incidences in the state. Shanks created a website with information about the symptoms and treatment and she’s now on the board of the National Capital Lyme Diseases Association. She travels to community events handing out her home made Emergency Tick removal kits that come with a magnifying glass – the ticks are tiny- a tweezers to carefully remove the tick and a clear plastic container to put it in.
“And I tell people, ‘You need to save the tick,’ because we have several different species of ticks in this area and each one carries different disease. And if you can identify that tick it will help the doctor treat you more properly. Because if people get treated at the beginning, then it’s sometimes just a bump
The Virginia Department of Health's David Gaines says this year will be a record for cases of Lyme Disease in southwestern Virginia, so was last year and the year before that.
