Missed the event? View the recorded session: https://www.sandwichcommunitynurse.org/scna-educational-recording

Tick Talk @ the Library Tuesday May 19th @ 4:30

If you’ve been outside lately, chances are you know already: This is a really bad tick season. Emergency department visits for tick bites are triple the usual rate for this time of year. New England is the epicenter.

Ticks can transmit 15 or so diseases. The blacklegged (deer) tick carries seven – with Lyme disease by far the most common. So you might want to hear an up-to-date rundown on Tuesday, May 19 at 4:30 PM in the Samuel Wentworth Library’s community room.

Presenter Marco Notarangelo leads tick- and mosquito-borne disease surveillance for the NH Health and Human Service Department’s Bureau of Infectious Disease Control. The session is sponsored by the Sandwich Community Nurse Association. The Wentworth Library will post a Zoom link on its website next Monday and Tuesday.

Notarangelo will discuss how ticks transmit disease, where the hot spots are, and how to reduce your exposure to tick-borne diseases. Among the “big three” carried by deer ticks, Lyme disease is followed by anaplasmosis, which infects white blood cells, and babesiosis, a parasite that infects red blood cells. Getting more attention lately is alpha-gal syndrome, transmitted by the Long Star tick. It conveys an allergy to eating red meat and sometimes exposure to other mammalian cells.

At least half of adult deer ticks hereabouts carry the Lyme disease bacterium. About a quarter of the nymphal stage are infected, but they cause most Lyme infections because they’re so tiny – the size of a poppy seed – and most likely to be overlooked.