Most people think of ticks as the vectors for Lyme disease — but there's a new virus that they're spreading, and its reach is going to expand as the planet continues to heat up.
What's happening?
News station WABE in Georgia reported on the emerging Heartland virus, which is the subject of research being done at Emory University. It's spread by the lone star tick, which is Georgia's most common tick.
The virus has fairly routine symptoms, including fever, fatigue, nausea, and diarrhea, WABE reported. But as Arabella Lewis, one of Emory's researchers, said, "There's no treatment at this point other than just kind of taking care of the symptoms." And while it's still relatively rare, several fatalities have already been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lead researcher Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec explained that without a cure or a vaccine, it will be especially important to track the disease's emerging patterns. "We are taking the steps to understand it now so if an increasing human incidence were to happen, we know what can be done," he said.
Why is this concerning?
Heartland is just one of several diseases that will likely increase in spread due to the accelerating rise of atmospheric temperatures.
"Changes in climate lead to changes in the environment, which result in changes in ecology, incidence, and distribution of these diseases," Ben Beard, the deputy director of CDC's vector-borne disease division, told WABE.
Namely, these changes involve longer summers and warmer winters, which extend both the length of the breeding season as well as the inhabitable territory for ticks.
"All of those things are kind of coming together," Beard told WABE. "And so the net effect is you have potentially more people over broader geographic distribution and over a longer period of time during the season potentially exposed to the bites of infected ticks."
Planetary warming has also led to heavier rains and slower evaporation rates — ideal conditions for mosquitoes. Health systems around the world have documented an alarming rise in transmission rates for several mosquito-borne viruses, including West Nile, dengue fever, chikungunya, Zika, and malaria.
What's being done to prevent an outbreak?
The Emory team is working to establish a baseline of information against which to compare future data collection, WABE reported.
"My hope is that people in these regions that are predicted to have high probability," said Steph Bellman, another researcher on the team, "will take more preventative measures when they're out on hikes, or just out kind of in the yard, just generally interacting with our environment to hopefully prevent them from getting any tick-borne diseases."
These measures include wearing long sleeves and pants, as well as using nontoxic bug repellents.
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