AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The month of June is unfortunately primetime for ticks, and the ticks started biting a few weeks earlier this year. That's according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Here's Alison Hinckley of the CDC.
ALISON HINCKLEY: We are seeing about the third highest rate that we've seen in the past 10 years right now, overall. In the Midwest, it's the highest rate we've seen in the past 10 years, so it's an important time to watch out for tick bites.
CHANG: Eek (ph). Hinckley says that almost all Lyme disease cases come from the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and upper Midwest. And some of those places are dealing with another tick threat, alpha-gal syndrome. That's an allergic reaction to red meat triggered by a tick bite. NPR's Pien Huang has this story.
PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: In 2020, pandemic times, Virginia Barbatti moved her family to Martha's Vineyard. It's an idyllic beach island off the coast of Massachusetts, a summer retreat for presidents from Ulysses S. Grant to Barack Obama. In the evenings at dinnertime, deer roamed their yard.
VIRGINIA BARBATTI: That was really exciting for us when we first moved here. It felt like, OK, we're connecting with nature and the outdoors, and it felt really special.
HUANG: Fast-forward a few years, Barbatti's feelings have changed.
BARBATTI: Knowing that there are thousands of ticks, potentially on a deer as they're walking through your yard, and they're dropping and moving them across the landscape, it really starts to shift perspective.
HUANG: Barbatti's island haven is plagued with ticks. For decades, it was deer ticks, parasites that can transmit bacteria that causes Lyme disease. Then in 2011, the lone star tick moved up from the southeast, probably on the backs of migrating birds. Lea Hamner is an epidemiologist at the Martha's Vineyard Tick Program at the local board of health. She says it caused a new wave of panic.
LEA HAMNER: Lone star tick bites actually are itchier and more unpleasant. And there's also the very, very terrifying piece that they do. When they're babies, they stick together.
HUANG: Hamner calls it a tick bomb.
HAMNER: And they get on you all at once. They're very, very small. But to have hundreds of tiny ticks on you is terrifying.
HUANG: Then there's the alpha-gal syndrome. Lone star ticks have a sugar in their saliva that can cause life-threatening allergies to certain foods.
HAMNER: Red meat is the common denominator, mammalian meat. Less people are also reactive to dairy products, which, of course, come from mammals as well.
HUANG: Some also develop allergies to gelatin capsules used in medicines and certain soaps and shampoos. Hamner says local chefs are offering alpha-gal-friendly food options, piecing together new menus from the internet.
HAMNER: And they don't want to be armed with Google. I literally had a restaurant ask me, is there something better? - because I feel like this is not good enough for me just to be Googling to protect my patrons from having an allergic reaction.
HUANG: Right now, there isn't. The science is still playing catch-up. A few years after lone star ticks arrived on Martha's Vineyard island, they came ashore to the mainland, probably also on birds. Escher Cattle is an entomologist and tick educator for Barnstable County, which covers Cape Cod. He keeps his tick collection at his office in South Yarmouth.
ESCHER CATTLE: I've actually got a copper plating kit at home. And I might turn a couple of the bigger dog ticks into a pair of earrings.
HUANG: The walls are covered in posters of beetles and butterflies. He pulls out glass vials with ticks preserved in alcohol. Some are from a nearby farm.
CATTLE: And then you can see there's a nymphal tick down here somewhere. It's extra tiny.
HUANG: I - oh, my gosh. That's super small.
CATTLE: The size of a poppy seed, man.
HUANG: Yeah. Ugh.
CATTLE: And then, yeah, I would say deer ticks are about the size of a sesame seed.
HUANG: For someone who goes looking for ticks, Cattle has a good track record.
CATTLE: So I've only gotten bit by ticks once in my time here so far.
HUANG: His main tip is to treat outdoor clothing with an insecticide called permethrin.
CATTLE: At least your shoes, socks and pants.
HUANG: And to wear EPA-approved insect repellent on exposed skin. Also, do a full-body tick check when you come in.
CATTLE: Get really familiar with, like, your different raised moles and everything so that you can really tell if a tick has attached to you.
HUANG: Getting ticks off quickly lowers your chances of getting disease. But public health leaders say the onus can't just be on individuals. They're hoping a Lyme disease vaccine in development from Pfizer and new federal investments in prevention, diagnostics and treatment will eventually reduce the growing threat of ticks. Pien Huang, NPR News, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
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