Oregon
Certain animals, like opossums, actually drive down tick numbers. Their immune systems kill the pathogens that cause Lyme disease more effectively than other animals’ do, and they’re particularly good at grooming their skin and eating any ticks they come across—every week, one opossum may kill around 5,000 ticks.
California
The disease is more widespread in the Bay Area than previously thought, and a newer pathogen—different from the culprit known to cause Lyme disease—is being discovered in an increasing number of local parks and grasslands. Stanford researchers say they have found ticks infected with the newer strain, called Borrelia miyamotoi, in open spaces in Santa Mateo County.
Los Angeles, California
“My brain was no longer able to pull information to form sentences. My memory was blank.” –Former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Yolanda Foster describing her ordeal with chronic neurological Lyme disease
Hamilton, Montana
In 1982, Willy Burgdorfer, a medical entomologist, determined that the infection was caused by the previously unknown bacteria spirochete borrelia.
Montana
One reason for the boom in tick numbers: Japanese barberry. This ornamental plant (now considered an invasive species), brought to the US in the 1800s, has swept across 32 states and creates the humid conditions that let ticks thrive. A barberry-infested forest has about 120 ticks per acre, while a barberry-free forest only has about 10.
New Mexico
In 2012, New Mexico had one confirmed case of Lyme disease, reported to the CDC, whereas PA had 5,033.
North Dakota
Yes, they may be called “deer ticks,” but these tiny pests actually contract Lyme after feeding on infected white-footed mice. Deer are more of a taxi service, transporting these Lyme-carrying ticks from forest to backyard.
Minnesota
According to the CDC, 95% of documented cases occur in 13 states—in the east from Virginia to Maine and in the northern Midwest from Wisconsin to Minnesota. This regional limit it bitterly contested by scores of people who say they have been infected with Lyme bacteria in the south, where the CDC doesn’t recognize the existence of Lyme.
Iowa
On Feb. 26 the Iowa Senate approved Senate File 2090, which would establish a state Lyme disease task force to examine the prevalence and treatment of chronic Lyme disease. The bill was sent to the Iowa House.
Nashville, Tennessee
A bite from the Lone star tick was found to be the likely cause of thousands of cases of a severe red meat allergy in several Southeast states.
New York
Hudson Valley: Richard Horowitz, one of the most prominent Lyme physicians, has seen more than 12,000 patients and offers a complex combo of dietary restrictions and supplements to help “detoxify” the body and starve the bacteria.Scientists have recently developed and field-tested an oral Lyme disease vaccine for white-footed mice, one of the primary transmitters of the Lyme bacteria. The vaccine kills the bacteria in the mouse’s blood, preventing it from transmitting to a feeding tick, ultimately reducing the instances of transmission to humans. This is one of the first targeted Lyme disease preventive measure studies.
Massachusetts
University of Massachusetts Amherst: A medical zoologist collects ticks, dead or alive, from people and pets across the country, to help map the distribution of different kinds of the blood-sucking arachnids, and to categorize the many disease-causing pathogens they carry.
Connecticut
The first cases of Lyme disease were identified in 1975 in cluster of children and adults in Lyme, CT by Dr. Allen Steere and his colleagues at Yale University. It was initially dubbed “Lyme arthritis.“Researchers from Yale University in New Haven identify cases in the U.S. of a new tick-borne infection caused by the species of bacteria Borrelia miyamotoi, which can be transmitted by the same ticks that spread Lyme disease and can cause similar symptoms.Three people in the Northeast who abruptly died in the past 13 months had an undetected heart inflammation caused by Lyme disease, according to a federal study that suggests death from the deer tick-borne bacteria is more common than previously thought.
The Alps, Italian-Austrian border
The oldest-known case of Lyme disease was documented in Otzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old frozen corpse discovered in the Alps in 1991. Researchers found evidence of Borrelia borgdorferi during a genome mapping of the corpse in 2012.
London, England
You can get your dog vaccinated for Lyme, but not yourself: A Lyme disease vaccine for humans was brought to the market in 1998, but it was abandoned in 2000 because of limitations (it could only be used on people age 15 and older), adverse effects (including symptoms of arthritis), and general lack of interest.
