Rocky Mountain spotted fever is already dangerous, and the new carrier is more likely to bite people than the ticks that usually spread it, the team of U.S. and Mexican researchers said.
As ticks in general become more common as the climate warms, they're a bigger threat, they added.
"Rocky Mountain spotted fever, caused by the bacteria Rickettsia rickettsii, is responsible for more human deaths than any other tick-borne disease in North America," the team wrote in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. Rocky Mountain spotted fever was reported in 4,269 people in the U.S. in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can kill up to 10 percent of victims, depending on the outbreak. The researchers were investigating an epidemic of the infection that broke out in the border town of Mexicali starting in 2008. It's already sickened at least 4,000 people, according to Mexican government estimates. Several hundred have died, and at least four people have died in the U.S. after crossing the border, according to this report and others.
"That's a very big epidemic of a fatal disease," said Dr. Janet Foley, an expert in the spread of animal-borne disease at the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. "There are likely thousands of cases."...
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1 comment:
Let's be sure to avoid using pesticides to keep the tick at bay. Pesticides might harm people. Maybe pheromones will work? What will be put them on and who? Beetles attacking our forests were fought with chemicals and airplanes and they were kept at bay until the greenies said Oh mercy me those poor beetles, let nature take its course. Natures course was the death of millions of acres of forest, followed by catastrophic wild fires which is being blamed upon global warming and forest mis-management. When we listen to the greenies crying for Natures Way then we are all to blame. Rachael Carson was a phony, Wild Horse Annie caused thousands of horses to either starve to death or were turned loose on federal lands to later be shot. There are many more of these freakos and listening to them puts us in the same class as they are.
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