"Just in time for National Lyme Disease Awareness Month, the Pennsylvania Department of Health launched a new online dashboard to provide Pennsylvania residents and health care providers with information about tickborne diseases. The online dashboard not only pinpoints where ticks are prevalent but also shows the latest state data on tickborne disease activity."
“Ticks have started. They only need about 4 C and they’re active and they’re questing,” explained David Beresford, an entomology professor at Trent University in Oshawa, Ont. (1/2)
“They want to grab on and they want to bite. #LymeDisease is the most common tick disease in Canada and is primarily spread by deer ticks. It’s been on the rise in Canada over the last decade due to #ClimateChange. It’s caused by a bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted through the bites of infected deer ticks.
In 2022 there were 2,168 reported cases of Lyme disease across Canada – up from just 144 cases reported in 2009”
➖rarely carry rabies, due to low body temp
➖usually do not bite
➖can eat about 4,000 ticks a week
➖eats cockroaches, mice,rats
➖does not dig holes, uses previously burrowed
➖will not wreck havoc in a garden
If they have found a warm place, leave them till spring or call a center #toronto
Super excited about this live interview I had with the UK’s Graham Coath (mainly excited that it wasn’t nearly as terrifying as I had worried it would be!) 🤣 We chat about my new album (obvs), the crazy life stories that inspired it, creativity, and all sorts of fun random stuff. 😊🎶⭐️
I cannot express how huge this is. Being able to get a diagnosis via blood test is so HUGE. For those lucky enough to have never experienced it, many of the conditions along with #MECFS that they hope this blood test could diagnose with over 90% certainty normally take YEARS to be diagnosed. #LongCovid#fibromyalgia#ms#LymeDisease
These are all life changing illnesses. The quicker you are diagnosed the quicker you can be treated.
An interesting article about a very interesting character: Dr Lisa Sanders, the internist heading up Yale's Long COVID clinic and inspiration for the television show House, and her journey from scoffing at long Lyme disease to being a champion for patients of post infectious conditions.
Lyme is rampant here and hard to diagnose. Long Lyme is real.
Mitigations:
One thing to do to avoid #LymeDisease carrying ticks is covering up and using repellant. Always check yourself after being in forest, bush, high grass.
Get rid of English Ivy (Hedera helix). It provides cover for #rodents that host Lyme. As a bonus removing the ivy will be a boon to rodent feeding #birds and save a lot of indigenous #trees from being choked to death.
Scientists Have Identified the Lyme Disease Genes Responsible for Severe Symptoms
'In a paper published in PLOS Pathogens, an international group of researchers report on the most comprehensive analysis of the Borrelia burgdorferi genome to date, which provides clues about what’s causing more severe forms of the disease, and lays the foundation for developing better diagnostic tests and treatments'
Thanks to @MarkRuffalo for helping raise awareness about #LymeDisease - and for all my #running friends here on Mastodon, two quick things:
(1) take care on those trail runs, and
(2) if you are in the UK and can spare a quid to support Lyme #research, my NY Marathon #fundraising page gives a bit of personal family background (2nd link).