More on Global Warming and Lyme Disease

So I know this is a little late for Lyme disease, but I found an article about it that draws and expands on Reikan Lin’s post from Sunday, “Global Warming as an Anthropogenic Factor.” Apparently, global warming is wreaking havoc in more ways than one. There is now a risk that global warming episodes may be associated with more epidemics of tick-borne diseases.

Dog ticks, mostly prevalent in spring, do not usually bite humans--the only cases have been in the summer because the ticks do not respond well to high temperatures. However, the current rising temperature of the earth is causing a problem, in that dog ticks now have an increasing affinity to bite humans. This is confirmed in both history and experimental models, where "under the effect of warmth, it was as if the ticks had gone mad and started to bite humans."

At least the Lyme GIANTmicrobe is cute!