Global Warming May Spread Tick-Borne Disease

Warming weather may expose humans to disease through bites from brown dog ticks, which have previously far preferred dogs to people. Brown dog ticks became unusually aggressive around April 2007, which was abnormally warm.

Several cases of serious illness were reported in people who had been bitten, so scientists began investigating and found large numbers of brown dog ticks infected with varieties of Ricksettia bacteria, which causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Mediterranean spotted fever and other life-threatening diseases. The most recent outbreak was in France, where researchers collected 218 brown dog ticks in less than an hour from around the house of a woman who had been bitten.

From MSNBC:

To see how much the temperature, in particular, mattered, Raoult and two colleagues turned themselves into human guinea pigs. They incubated 500 brown dog ticks at 77 degrees Fahrenheit and 500 at 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, they placed the ticks on their own arms.

“They take a very long time to attach,” Raoult said, bravely. “It’s not like a mosquito. They don’t have time to bite you.”

After an hour, about half of the ticks incubated at 104 degrees tried to burrow in, Raoult said. None of those incubated at 77 degrees did. The results appeared in November in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Raoult suspects thirst drives the ticks to seek human blood at higher temperatures.

As global climate warms, dog ticks might be more likely to bite people, and tick-transmitted diseases might become more common, the researchers concluded.

The researchers say that the sudden surge from 77 degrees to 104 degrees is too extreme to mimic a realistic global warming scenario, so more testing is needed. But the scenario in France shows how quickly and unexpectedly ecosystems can react to changes in climate.

So, that’s another one to add to your list of global warming doomsday predictions – food shortages, disappearing coastal communities, malaria outbreaks, animals going extinct, extreme weather patterns and tick-borne diseases. Fun, fun, fun!

Link [MSNBC]
Photo credit: Animal Diversity Web

Related Posts:

Aborigines of Australia will Feel Global Warming Most
Climate Change Helps Spread Deadly Diseases
Global Warming Will Cause Malaria Epidemic in Australia and Pacific Islands
Global Warming Linked to Viral Epidemic in Europe
Worst Global Warming Impacts Avoidable – If We Act Now