A new species of tick, the longhorned tick, has arrived in the U.S.
In other parts of the world it鈥檚 been known to carry diseases that can sicken people and livestock. In East Asia the tick can called SFTS. A in China looking at SFTS cases there found that 16 percent of people who were diagnosed with the disease died of it.
鈥淪o far, none of the ticks that anyone has collected here in the United States have been found positive for any known human or animal pathogen,鈥� says Ben Beard, the deputy director of the Division of Vector-Borne Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the U.S. the tick has mostly been spotted on animals in the East and South, including on in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania and in Arkansas. A lot of those ticks have been pickled in alcohol and sent to the facility in Fort Collins, Colorado, where Beard works.
鈥淲e鈥檙e really encouraged by the fact that none have been found positive yet, but the jury's still out in terms of how important this tick is in terms of transmitting diseases here in U.S.,鈥� he says.
The CDC is now growing colonies of the ticks. Once they have enough of them, they鈥檒l start another round of testing to see if the critters might be capable of transmitting rare but serious diseases that are already in the U.S., including Heartland, Powassan and Bourbon viruses, in addition to Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. The agency is also working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rutgers University and state health departments to establish how widespread it is.
Could the tick come to the Mountain West, if it isn鈥檛 here already?
鈥淲e just don鈥檛 know that yet and that鈥檚 among the things that we鈥檙e studying,鈥� says Beard.
There is one unusual thing about the longhorned tick that could allow it to spread more easily than others. It鈥檚 capable of reproducing asexually -- no males required.
鈥淚t鈥檚 actually a really unusual biological phenomenon,鈥� says Beard. 鈥淧robably the biggest concern about it is that you don鈥檛 have to have males and females both introduced into a new area in order to have the tick establish there.鈥�
Beard says all the longhorned ticks here in the U.S. so far are female, which indicated that they are, indeed, reproducing asexually. All it would take is one female to get a new infestation going.
This story was produced by the Mountain West 暗黑爆料 Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, Yellowstone Public Radio in Montana, KUER in Salt Lake City and KRCC and KUNC in Colorado.
