Connecticut officials have reported the first human case in the state of the tickborne disease Rickettsia parkeri.
This is also the first case detected in the Northeastern region of the country. The disease is spread by the Gulf Coast tick Amblyomma maculatum. Unlike other ticks in the region, Gulf Coast ticks favor grassland habitats.
“Although cases of this disease have been reported in the southeastern part of the country, this is the first report of this disease in the Northeast, an area already plagued by tick-borne diseases, including Lyme disease, babesiosis, anaplasmosis, Powassan virus disease, and ehrlichiosis,” said the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in a letter detailing the identification.
Although cases of this disease have been reported in the southeastern part of the country, this is the first report of this disease in the Northeast, an area already plagued by tick-borne diseases.
The disease is similar to Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) but with relatively milder symptoms. According to a case report in Emerging Infectious Diseases, the patient was a woman who was bitten in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and recovered after a course of doxycycline.
Low risk of tickborne encephalitis from organ transplant
In other tick news, a new report from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) on the risk of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) spread through blood or tissue donations finds the risk from blood transmission is very low and is low for organ transplants.
Up to one-third of Europeans with TBE are asymptomatic and thus could donate blood or organs without knowledge of their infection.
Despite almost 30,000 cases of TBE annually, the ECDC said only two cases via transfusion from one donor have been reported, and three cases via organ transplant were reported from 2013 to 2022.
“Reports of transmission are rare despite important TBE notification rates in endemic areas and non-trivial seroprevalence among blood donors,” the authors wrote. “This suggests a very low likelihood of transmission of TBEV leading to symptomatic disease through blood transfusion.”
Finally today, a study in The Central European Journal of Medicine surveyed US Lyme disease reports from 2011 to 2020 and found that the number of reported cases was lower in even-numbered years than in the preceding odd-numbered years.
The authors said this suggests that fewer nymphal-stage Ixodes scapularis ticks infected with Borrelia burgdorferi were present during even-numbered years in locations where people spend time.
