What you need to know about tick season in Saskatchewan

Tick season is here in Saskatchewan, and a summer health concern that appears to be rising is that of Lyme disease.

Dr. Jenny Wachter, a scientist with the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, joined the Evan Bray Show on Monday to discuss her research on ticks and the disease in the province.

Listen to the full interview here:

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Bray:  Is there such a thing as tick season?

Dr. Jenny Wachter: There is. That’s when we see peaks in ticks, and you go out and get a lot of ticks on you. We call that tick season. So it usually happens in the spring, and then there’s usually another one again in the fall.

How many types of ticks do we have in Saskatchewan?

Wachter: The most common one that we’ll see, and what I come in contact with, usually when I go out hiking, is just the dog tick or the wood tick. There’s also the black legged or deer tick that we’re seeing more and more here, and that’s the tick that causes or can transmit Lyme disease.

They have black legs, is that what distinguishes them?

Wachter: Correct. If you see them crawling around on you, the dog tick will have kind of reddish or brown legs. The blacklegged tick, or deer tick, has black legs.

Lyme disease is one of the threats from ticks. Can we talk about what that is and how you get it through ticks?

Wachter: Lyme disease is a bacterial infection that can start out very mild. You get kind of general symptoms attributed to any kind of common cold, like fevers and tiredness, but the bacteria can spread throughout the body. That’s when it can cause more severe symptoms, like arthritis. It can get into the heart and cause carditis or even Lyme neuroborreliosis. It can affect the nervous system.

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Is the tick required to bite you for you to be at risk of Lyme disease?

Wachter: Yes. The only way we can get it is by being bitten by a tick that has the Lyme disease bacterium, so we can’t spread it from person to person. It’s not transmitted by blood. It’s just transmitted by the bite of an infected tick, and the tick has to be kind of attached to you and feeding to you for about 12 to 36 hours before the bacterium can leave the tick and get into the host that the tick is feeding on.

Is there a certain area or environment where ticks are most likely to be?

Wachter: They like the tall grasses and the debris from fallen trees, like leaves and things like that. They survive through the winters, so they like to burrow down and over winter in those nice areas. When the tick season comes and they’re ready to find a host to feed on, they’ll climb up onto the top of tall grasses and try to find something to attach to and feed on.

Are there certain people who are more prone to Lyme disease?

Wachter: It’s really a risk to everyone. The bacterium that causes Lyme disease doesn’t just infect people; it also infects animals. It’s not picky; it will go into and infect anyone. As long as you’ve come in contact with a tick that carries Lyme disease bacteria and are bitten by it, you have an equal chance as everyone else of getting it.

What do you hope the outcome of your research will be on ticks and Lyme disease?

Wachter: The goal is to really look at the bacterium and how it interacts with the host and the tick vector to try to find areas that we can target for either prophylaxis, like a vaccine to prevent it. There’s no human vaccine for Lyme disease yet, or a treatment to limit the lasting outcomes that can result from Lyme disease.

How do we treat it?

Wachter: With an antibiotic. We don’t have any worry of antimicrobial resistance with Borrelia burgdorferi, which is the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. So it’s just treatment with doxycycline antibiotics usually.