Emerging tick-borne disease (too many deer)

Washington University in St. Louis ^ | Feb 25, 2010 | Unknown

[decimon]

A domestic ecological mystery

IMAGE: Research assistant Rachel Katz drags for ticks in the Ozarks. The drag cloth takes advantage of the ticks' natural host-seeking behavior, called questing. Ticks climb to the top of grass... Click here for more information.

Stories of environmental damage and their consequences always seem to take place far away and in another country, usually a tropical one with lush rainforests and poison dart frogs.

In fact, similar stories starring familiar animals are unfolding all the time in our own backyards — including gripping tales of diseases jumping from animal hosts to people when ecosystems are disrupted.

This time we're not talking hemorrhagic fever and the rainforest. We're talking tick-borne diseases and the Missouri Ozarks.

And the crucial environmental disruption is not the construction of roads in the rainforest, it is the explosion of white-tailed deer populations.

An interdisciplinary team at Washington University in St. Louis has been keeping a wary eye on emerging tick-borne diseases in Missouri for the past 20 years. Team members include ecologists Brian F. Allan and Jonathan M. Chase, molecular biologists Robert E. Thach and Lisa S. Goessling, and physician Gregory A. Storch.

The team recently developed a sophisticated DNA assay, described in the March 2010 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, that allows them to identify which animal hosts are transmitting pathogens to ticks.

"This new technology is going to be the key to understanding the transmission of diseases from wildlife to humans by ticks," Allan says.

>

"If you had to point to one factor that led to the emergence of tick-borne diseases in the eastern United States, it would have to be these unnaturally large populations of deer," Allan says.

[HollyB]

Both my son and my dog has had lyme disease within the past 2 years. Both of them were pretty sick form it. Luckily with my son, we caught it immediately. My do probably had it for a long time because now he suffers with arthritis. It’s a terrible illness. There have been quite a few cases of lyme in our area. Our yards have become the norm for deer to run at night due to the thinning woods from development.

[HollyB]

I always thought that was true too, but the ticks around here are hardy, I have found them much after freezes have taken place. We found one on our dog when it was snowing out a few weeks ago. It’s crazy. I’m starting to wonder if they ever go away.

[decimon]

We had a 9 year old girl killed last week when a dear when through the front windshield. And I have a good friend who totaled her car this weekend when she hit a deer.

That's where they need to up the hunting licenses.

[decimon]

I always thought that was true too, but the ticks around here are hardy, I have found them much after freezes have taken place.

Yeah, I was just repeating what I've heard. I don't know what causes them to burrow in for the winter.

[decimon]

Both my son and my dog has had lyme disease within the past 2 years.

And I don't think you become immune to it for having had it.

[decimon]

We found one on our dog when it was snowing out a few weeks ago.

If you could see it then it was probably a dog tick. Deer ticks, the Lyme Disease carriers, are so small it's hard to see the #*^%$%@.

[ntmxx]

“...The feel good feed the deer types are some of the most...”

Agreed, well stated.

[fanfan]

Thanks for the ping neverdem, and the post decimon.

I discovered Tick Twisters because my dog is always picking them up on our country property. We have a big problem with deer around here.

I'd recommend them to anyone. Disclaimer: I am not in the Tick Twister business.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Some years ago, I heard of a program in the Midwest, in a State with far too many deer. They had pretty much an open hunting season.

Then someone had the idea of keeping refrigerator trucks near the major hunting areas. If a hunter shot a deer, he could help himself to a few steaks, and they would pick up the rest of the carcass. With a freezer truck full of deer, they would take the meat for processing, then use it as food for the poor. It was a big help to charities.

I figure that an extra step could be used, to cook and process the meat for canning, including irradiating it to keep it from spoiling. What amounts to 10lb cans of deer Dinty Moore. Or just deer meat “au jus”.

Feed a lot of hungry people, cull the deer herds, and a lot less deer meat going to waste.

[decimon]

If a hunter shot a deer, he could help himself to a few steaks, and they would pick up the rest of the carcass.

This has been batted around here before. If I have it right then in some states you can't do this for the health laws.

And then there's trans fats. Does venison have trans fats? Or too much salt? Maybe the deer have been to a salt lick. ;-)

Seriously, I'm all for feeding excess deer and Canadian Geese to the needy.

[Smokin' Joe]

Birds are great for keeping the tick population down, chickens, guinea fowl, and others will thin them out some. Dry weather usually brings the critters on, it seems. In this case, the disease problem is not just the ticks, but the hosts. You need to break the chain somewhere, and thinning the deer herd can help put meat in freezers, if nothing else.

We have no huge excess of deer here, and this is shortgrass prairie, badlands, and farmland, for the most part. I have to give the State here credit for reasonable management practices which have kept deer populations under control, and which allow extra permits for farmers/ranchers who have serious problems with deer feeding on crops and forage, which helps the relatively easy availability of food from translating into too many deer.

[neverdem]

And then there's trans fats. Does venison have trans fats?

Natural trans fats are good for you according to that website. I can't say one way or the other.

The "bad" trans fats are man made. Hydrogen is added to polyunsaturated fatty acids to make trans fats.

Wikipedia seems to do a decent job when it doesn't involve politics. I didn't read all of it at Wikipedia. What I did read agrees with what I remember from school.

[Randy Larsen]

We hunters here in Kalifornia would be grateful for the chance to see a deer!

I would love to shoot one!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Smokin' Joe]

You’re Welcome, Alamo-Girl!

[vetvetdoug]

Veterinarians have been dealing with tick borne diseases in animals since there have been vets. Several causes of Acute Respiratory Syndrome accompanied with thrombocytopenia are attributed to ticks and veterinarians had been treating them since the early 1960’s. It was not until 1995 did the physicians discover that the same ticks and the same organism caused the same syndrome in humans. Since then, over a dozen separate tick borne diseases have been discovered.

[decimon]

Blood-sucking insects are revolting but I could live with them if they didn’t leave behind the diseases they carry. Ticks and mosquitoes.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

As long as you had proper meat processing and inspection, I can’t imagine it being very illegal, as far as venison are concerned.

Geese are a lot harder, because they are under the Federal Migratory Bird Act of 1918, which never considered the possibility that someday there might be too many geese, or that the geese might become non-migratory. (Insert coconut joke here.)

Of the two, it was long thought that goose grease was bad for you, but this is not the case.

http://www.goosefat.co.uk/gfis_04.html

There is something inherently funny about this page.