Tick season is in full swing, but what do you do with a tick you find on yourself or your pet?
The University of Connecticut’s Connecticut Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory is one place that will test your ticks to see if they’re carrying any pathogens that can cause diseases.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease are on the rise. Local scientists want to test the ticks you find to see what diseases they might be carrying.
Dede Delaney’s dog Chief loves to roll around outside, which is why Delaney doesn’t take any chances when it comes to ticks.
“He’s on preventative – the drops that you put on his back and in between his shoulder blades – and he also gets checked for Lyme at his vet,” the Windham resident explained.
She also checks him over herself. The last thing she wants is for Chief to get Lyme disease like she had.
“I’ve had Lyme four times and I know what it’s like and it’s debilitating,” Delaney said.
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The scientists at UConn are working to keep people and their pets safe.
Dr. Guillermo Risatti, the section head of Diagnostic Testing for CVMDL, said since April, his lab technicians have identified and tested 50 to 60 ticks from across the state for pathogens that can affect animals or humans.
“The most common pathogen that we see in ticks, more or less one in three or one in four ticks will be carrying Borrelia burgdorferi, which is the agent for Lyme disease,” Risatti said.
That information can be used by different UConn researchers who work to develop vaccines and preventative control measures to combat tick-borne illnesses.
Risatti said it’s important for residents to submit ticks, so they can see what problems are emerging.
“One of the things that we see with these pathogens is that they’re not similar every year. They have changes and that, we don’t know what that means, but it may have an implication for designing vaccines for controlling these diseases,” Risatti said.
The lab technicians are also testing thousands of blood samples from horses each year to see if they have been exposed to Lyme disease.
The prices for tick testing can be found on the lab’s website.
Many local health departments also test ticks.
