Health Officials Fear Lyme Reporting Changes Make Spawn Complacency

By Kaaren Valenta

Last year 320 people in Newtown tested positive for Lyme disease, according to reports from area labs. This year a change in the reporting procedure has many critics concerned that Lyme will be greatly underestimated.

“We aren’t getting nearly as many reports,” Newtown Health District Director Donna McCarthy admitted at a Lyme disease forum held at The Homesteads at Newtown last week. “I’m afraid it’s going to give people a false sense of security.”

The health district and the Newtown Lyme Disease Task Force sponsored the forum to tell the public once again about the risks of contracting Lyme disease and how to prevent it. Connecticut leads the nation in reported cases of Lyme disease, a disease named for the town, Old Lyme, where the first cases were identified nearly 30 years ago.

Lyme disease is caused by the bacteria, a spirochete, spread to humans by the bite of the black-legged tick, also known as a deer tick because the adult ticks often live on, and are spread by, deer. The most dangerous time of the tick cycle, however, is when the ticks are much smaller, in their nymph stage in early spring and summer. Deer do not infect ticks with Lyme disease; ticks become infected after feeding on mice and other small mammals.

In recent years, the state required laboratories testing blood to report positive Lyme tests. The program was underwritten by a grant from the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The grant stopped this year so we aren’t getting lab reports,” Ms McCarthy said. “We are getting more doctor reports than we used to, but the numbers aren’t keeping up. I don’t think there is less Lyme. Anyone you talk to either has had Lyme, has a family member with it, or knows a friend who has it.

“We’re always going to have Lyme as long as we have deer ‘taxi-cabs’ to bring them around,” she said.

Kim Harrison, a nurse and member of the Newtown Lyme Disease Task Force, said there were 584 confirmed cases of Lyme in Newtown in the past two years according to lab reports. A survey taken of Weston, Ridgefield, and Newtown concluded that 38 percent of the households had experienced a family member with Lyme, she said, adding that 50 percent of all reported cases involved children.

“School nurses reported that they took 205 ticks off students in the last two years,” she said, “and parents reported over 100 cases of Lyme.”

Ms McCarthy said Dr Thomas Draper, health district advisor, have asked area pediatricians through Danbury Hospital to help collect data this summer in a small survey.

“They are reporting the number of Lyme cases seen, the patient’s gender and age, and how they were diagnosed,” she said.

The most important thing to do to combat Lyme is to do a daily check for ticks, she said.

“Do a tick check, do a tick check,” she repeated several times during her presentation. “Check yourself, your children, your pets. If you find a tick, remove it by grasping it behind the head with fine-tipped tweezers and pull straight up with a steady hand.”

Bring the tick to the health district office in Canaan House at Fairfield Hills so it can be sent to the state Agricultural Experiment Station to be tested for Lyme disease, she said. Of the 350 ticks submitted since January, there have been 219 reports returned. Of these, 29 percent were positive for Lyme disease.

“The report takes five or six weeks so people should see their doctors if they have any symptoms –– if they don’t feel well or they get a rash,” Ms McCarthy said. The most common symptoms are the rash, migratory joint pains, and fever. There may not be a rash, she said, or the symptoms may be as severe as facial paralysis –– Bell’s palsy –– or neurological and cardiac problems.

Not all ticks are infected and it may take as much as 24 to 48 hours before a tick injects spirochetes into a human body. Despite this, the incidence of Lyme disease and other tick borne diseases, including babesiosis and ehrlichiosis, have become major public health threats in Connecticut.

Untreated, these diseases can cause severe neurological, cognitive, and emotional impairments.

Ms McCarthy said the largest number of ticks can be found at the edges of lawn –– the wood line in weeds, tall grass, shrubs, and low-hanging trees. It helps to edge the lawn with a tick barrier of wood chips.

“Dress properly,” she said. “Wear light-colored clothing and long pants. Tuck the pants into socks and tuck in your shirt. Cover your hair with a hat; contain long hair. And do a tick check.”

Richard Whitman, a representative of Connecticut Tick Control, said a study has shown that bait boxes, placed along the wood line, have helped to reduce the numbers of ticks as much as 98 percent by the second year by killing the ticks in the nymph stage. Spraying in the fall helps to kill adult ticks, he added.