Climate Change Causing “Increases in Tick-Borne Diseases …” What You Need to Know Before Venturing Outside This Spring and Summer

Dog ticks, which are mainly a threat during the spring into summer, do not usually bite people, but that appears to be changing. When the ticks are exposed to higher temperatures, such as may occur as the global climate warms, they appear to acquire a taste for human flesh, a change that could cause an increase in dangerous tick-borne diseases.

According to research by Didier Raoult, a professor at the University of Marseille School of Medicine in France, hot weather may be making dog ticks turn on humans. They decided to investigate after a series of unusual outbreaks in humans occurred.

Raoult and colleagues incubated 500 brown dog ticks at 77 degrees Fahrenheit and 500 at 104 degrees Fahrenheit. They then placed the ticks on their own arms. After 1.5 hours, about half of the ticks kept at 104 degrees had tried to burrow in, compared to none of those at 77 degrees.

“From a global perspective, we predict that as a result of globalization and warming, more pathogens transmitted by the brown dog tick may emerge in the future,” the researchers wrote in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

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