This one is nasty! If you it is going to be tough for those traveling through and camping in the woods on foot not to get tick bit. Tick-borne Powassan virusSummer is bringing fears of a rare tick-borne disease called Powassan. This potentially life-threatening virus is carried and transmitted by three types of ticks, including the deer tick that transmits Lyme disease.
Over the past decade, 75 cases have been reported in the northeastern states and the Great Lakes region, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Though no one can say how many infections will occur this year, warmer winters have led to an increased tick population, so experts predict rising tick-borne infections of many types.
Anyone bitten by an infected tick can get it. Infections are most likely during late spring, early summer and mid-fall, when ticks are most active. About 15% of patients who are infected and have symptoms are not going survive. Of the survivors, at least 50% will have long-term neurological damage that is not going to resolve. Although most infected people will never show symptoms, those who do become sick usually do so a few days to about a week after the tick bite. The most common symptoms will be fever and headache. You basically feel nonspecific flu-like stuff, including muscle aches and pains; maybe you have a little rash on your skin, but almost certainly, you'll have a fever and the headache. The unlucky few who develop a more serious illness will do so very quickly over the next couple of days. You start to develop difficulties with maintaining your consciousness, cognition, may develop seizures and develop inability to breathe on your own.Just as there are no vaccines to prevent infection, there are also no treatments for Powassan. Standard treatment includes intravenous fluids, though antiviral medications, systemic corticosteroids and other drugs have been tried in some patients.
It seem that there are more and more deer that they're finding that have been infected with this virus, so we should expect it to increase in human disease incidence over the next few years. Similarly, Lyme is showing increasing numbers.
According to a recent tick summary report (PDF), 19% of deer ticks received and tested by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, a state-owned research facility, in 2012 were found to be infected with Lyme disease, and 29% of the deer ticks tested positive for the virus in 2016.
To make the matter more complicated, we are seeing greater number of ticks infected with other tick-associated pathogens, including babesiosis and anaplasmosis. Both babesiosis and anaplasmosis usually don't have symptoms, just like Powassan, though both may cause severe or even life-threatening illnesses.
With ticks, it is no longer just Lyme disease.
See more at:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/03/health/powassan-tick-virus/
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