Not Just Lyme Disease Anymore: 7 New Reasons To Fear Ticks This Summer

July 10, 2015 | 2:10 PM | Carey Goldberg

'Not Just Lyme Disease Anymore': 7 New Reasons To Fear Ticks This Summer

 Michael Vitelli of Marshfield Hills, Mass., a fit and active father of four who was recently laid low by the tickborne disease anaplasmosis. (Courtesy)

BOSTON A father of four boys, Michael Vitelli of Marshfield Hills, Mass., lives a high-energy, outdoor and active life when he's not at work. He fishes, he hikes, he golfs, he can even boast a running streak of 642 days in a row.

But last month, on what would have been day 643 of running, a tick brought him to an excruciating halt.

After feeling achey for a few days, Vitelli suddenly got too sick to get out of bed, as if with a summer flu — fever, sweats and chills, headache. Then he got even sicker. His test results looked dire: protein and bile in his urine;  liver function gone haywire; platelets, red and white blood cells down so low that his chart looked like he had leukemia, a doctor told him.

The diagnosis, after three days in the hospital: anaplasmosis, an infection borne by the same deer ticks that carry Lyme disease. It's up dramatically in Massachusetts: About 600 confirmed and probable cases statewide last year, compared to closer to just 100 in 2010.

Never heard of it? Neither had Vitelli. Naturally, he'd heard of Lyme, which has spread across much of the country in recent decades and now infects an estimated 300,000 Americans a year at least, mainly in New England and the Midwest.

But like most people, he didn't know that ticks can carry a whole array of nasty bugs — with obscure names like babesiosis and Borrelia miyamotoi — and that, though much less common, they, too, are on the rise, following more slowly behind the inexorable march of Lyme disease.

Read the full (very inclusive, complete with lots of reader comments) story here:

http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2015/07/not-just-lyme-disease-anymore-anaplasmosis-babesiosis