‘Aggressive’ lone star tick invades CNY, raising fears of new diseases

Lone star tick reaches Central New York

Lone Star tick.

Syracuse, N.Y. — Amid the 3,600 ticks mailed to Dr. Saravanan Thangamani’s lab since last summer, one stood out.

The lone star tick found and sent in by an Onondaga County resident in July marks a new era in the spread of ticks and tick-borne disease, said Thangamani, who runs Upstate Medical University’s vector disease lab.

“The lone star tick is kind of silently emerging,” Thangamani said. “Sooner or later we will have this problem. In the next year or two we will slowly start to see it here.”

The lone star tick, more common to the Southwest, is slowly pushing its way north and into New York state. They are already abundant on Long Island. Of the 84 ticks sent to his lab from Suffolk County, more than half were lone star ticks.

By contrast, just one of the 554 ticks sent in from Onondaga County was a lone star tick. Nearly all the rest, 523, were deer ticks. Thangamani said the lab also received one lone star tick from each of three other Upstate counties: Broome, Lewis and Monroe.

Lone star ticks don’t transmit Lyme disease, the most common illness caused by the far more abundant deer, or black-legged, tick. The lone star ticks can carry several other serious bacterial and viral diseases, however, and can also cause a bizarre allergy to red meat.

There’s a lot to dislike about the lone star tick. First of all, at about 1/8th inch long, it’s about twice as big as a deer tick.

“You can feel them bite,” said Brian Leydet, an epidemiologist and tick researcher at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. “They are very aggressive ticks.”

Deer ticks are “questing” ticks; they climb onto grass and then attach themselves to a passing mammal. Lone star ticks are “hunter” ticks; they seek out mammals, including humans, and crawl quickly toward them.

“Sometimes you can see the forest floor moving because there are so many of them,” Leydet said.

Lone star females can lay 8,000 to 10,000 eggs. The egg masses are so large they’re visible in the forest, and thousands of ticks can emerge simultaneously.

“It’s like a tick grenade goes off,” said Leydet, who got his Ph.D. in Louisiana, where he saw and collected plenty of lone star ticks. “You have hundreds of the ticks spread out and start crawling on your arms and legs. You’ll have thousands of these things on your pants.”

Lone star ticks can run three times faster than deer ticks, according to Cornell University.

Lone star ticks don’t dry out as easily as deer ticks, so they can venture farther away from the forest edge and into open areas that are generally free of deer ticks.

Thangamani’s lab found no diseases in the lone star tick discovered last summer in Onondaga County, but the species can carry and transmit several illnesses. Those include ehrlichiosis, a bacterial disease with similar symptoms to Lyme that can result in severe illness; and tularemia, also caused by a bacterium that can cause fevers and skin ulcers. Lone star ticks can also carry several viruses that cause disease, including Southern tick-associated rash illness, which looks and feels like Lyme.

Most worrisome, Thangamani said, is the ticks can carry heartland virus. While only 40 cases had been found in the U.S. as of 2018 — the closest in Indiana — a closely related virus in China kills 30% of people it infects, Thangamani said.

“If (heartland virus) gets established in the U.S., it’s going to be a big problem because we don’t have a vaccine for it,” Thangamani said. “It’s a troublemaker.”

Ticks found in New York state

From left to right are three species of ticks found in New York: black-legged, or deer, tick (nymph and female); lone star tick; American dog tick. All three can transmit diseases to humans.

The tick can also transmit a sugar molecule called alpha-gal that can cause an allergic reaction if the infected person eats mammal flesh. Within three to six hours of consuming red meat, someone with alpha gel syndrome can suffer hives, swelling of the lips and face, and potentially serious shortness of breath.

There is no cure. The Mayo Clinic advises sufferers to keep an epinephrine injector available in case the reaction becomes severe. The allergy often fades away in a year or two, according to the clinic.

Dr. Kristopher Paolino, an infectious disease specialist at Upstate who sees many patients with tick-borne diseases, said he has treated two patients for alpha gel syndrome. It appeared they contracted it while traveling in the South, he said.

Thirty species of ticks are found in New York, but only four can transmit disease to humans: deer, lone star, dog and woodchuck ticks.

While the lone star ticks are common in the Southwest, the name comes not from Texas’s nickname but from the white dot on the female’s back.

Thangamani’s lab tests ticks for diseases at no charge and emails results. Since the program began in July, more than 3,600 mailed-in ticks have been identified and tested in New York. Nearly 90% were deer ticks, and about a third of those carried the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.

The lab also found a new disease in deer ticks, called myamotoi, that was first identified in humans in the Northeast in 2013. It causes recurring fevers, intense pain and other symptoms, and has been found in a few Central New Yorkers.

The tick-testing program is on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic, but Thangamani hopes to resume it later this year.

The lone star tick continues marching on, however. Paolino said a local veterinarian recently pulled two lone star ticks from a dog.

“I feel like it’s only a matter of time before we start to see them invade more and set up shop in Central New York,” said Paolino.

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