Lyme disease risk rising in the Blue Ridge as ticks expand their territory

BOONE, N.C. — When Appalachian State biology professor Steve Seagle drags for ticks near the Boone Greenway Trail, he has a pretty good sense of what he’ll find.

“It’s almost certainly going to be a blacklegged tick,” he said.

The blacklegged tick, or deer tick, is a known carrier of the bacteria responsible for Lyme disease, and it’s a relative newcomer to the North Carolina Blue Ridge. About a decade ago, Seagle said the tick species was much harder to find in the state.

“I can’t say there were not any,” he said. “They really were not here, in not in any high density.”

That’s been changing in the past few years, however, as the tick’s range has spread both north into Canada and south into western North Carolina, and with them, a spike in Lyme cases. The highest concentration of cases is in the northwest corner of the state, around the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“That’s not something a lot of people are used to thinking about,” Seagle said.

Researchers are studying a number of potential causes for why the blacklegged tick’s range is expanding, with theories including climate change, deer range and Seagle’s area of research, reforestation, and land use.

Given the tick’s nature as a forest species, Seagle is studying how the return of southern forests might be impacting the blacklegged tick’s range.

“These are species that when we deforested most of the eastern United States in the 1800s they basically lost habitat,” he said. “As we’ve abandoned more agricultural land, forests have grown back in the eastern United States this is a potential reason why this species is now moving in different directions.”

As for the potential impact of climate change, Seagle isn’t sure it’s a factor in the tick’s range, at least with regards to the ticks moving south. He believes it could, however, be a factor in how many ticks we might see in the state and how long their active seasons are.

“As the climate warms, you’re going to have warmer winters in the temperate zone, and consequently, those conditions in the winter that might kill a lot of ticks don’t occur,” he said.

Seagle said blacklegged ticks typically go out “questing” or in search of a blood meal, when the temperature is above 40 degrees and the humidity is higher than 40 percent.

“That’s one thing that I hear a lot of here in the Blue Ridge because blacklegged ticks really haven’t been here long, people get a tick on them in the winter and they’re like, ‘What’s going on?’” he said.

From his recent collections, Seagle said nymphs, which can bite humans and spread disease, are already out and adult blacklegged ticks will start emerging in October, so if you’re planning to travel to the mountains this fall, Seagle recommends you take precautions.

Wear light-colored clothing that covers your arms and legs, tuck your pants into your socks, and wear bug repellant. When you get home, check your body for ticks and shower as soon as possible. Ticks need to be attached for roughly 24-36 hours before they can spread Lyme disease.

If infected, Lyme disease presents with flu-like symptoms and muscle aches. The best-known symptom is the bullseye rash that can appear a few days after a tick bite, but it is not always present. Early treatment of the disease dramatically improves prognosis, but if left untreated, Lyme disease can progress to cause severe symptoms and impairment to the heart and nervous system.

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