Tick-Borne Threats Spread Beyond the Northeast as New At-Home Lyme Test Launches

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This June, I noted that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., launched a broad Lyme and tick-borne disease initiative that combines existing federal research funding with tick-control pilots, innovation prizes, and a goal of cutting Lyme cases 25% by 2035.

The move is an overdue, more aggressive response to rising tick-borne threats, which include Lyme disease, babesiosis, and alpha-gal syndrome.

The need for the new approach is underscored by news that ticks carrying Lyme disease and other pathogens are becoming established farther south, including North Carolina, where researchers found that 39.6% of adult blacklegged ticks sampled in Biltmore Forest carried the Lyme-causing bacterium. These are at levels comparable to Northeastern hotspots.

More than a third, 39.6%, of the adult blacklegged ticks tested positive for the bacteria. “That is a number that you might see in places like Pennsylvania, New York, New England states where Lyme is common,” [University of North Carolina School of Medicine’s Dr. Ross Boyce] said.

The research also found, for the first time, North Carolina ticks with other types of disease-causing bacteria.

Four of the ticks were found to carry Anaplasma phagocytophilum, and four others carried Borrelia miyamotoi, a bacterium that causes hard tick relapsing fever and is almost always thought to be concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest. Both types can cause flu-like symptoms in humans.

The discoveries, particularly of the new bacteria in North Carolina, are “significant,” said Mark Soloski, senior adviser of the Lyme Disease Research Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine. “Physicians and healthcare workers, especially in that region, need to be very mindful and aware that ticks infected with this bacteria have moved in.” Soloski was not involved with the new research.

Thanks to American innovation, there is now TickCrusher by LymeAlert, which is the first rapid at-home tick testing kit designed to detect Lyme-causing bacteria in ticks removed from people or pets in less than 30 minutes.

Created by physician assistant and MIT Sloan Fellow Erin Dawicki, TickCrusher grew out of her efforts to help patients navigate tick bites and the questions surrounding them.

“Every day, I get calls from my patients who say, ‘I found a tick on me or my child,’ and they don’t know what to do,” Dawicki, the CEO of LymeAlert, told The Post. “The reason they’re calling is that they either can’t afford to come see me or they’ve met their deductible or can’t get time off work.”

She searched for a product that could help patients “know when they need to access healthcare faster and who to properly prescribe [antibiotics] for,” and quickly realized it didn’t exist.

So, Dawicki decided to create her own product while taking a healthcare entrepreneurship class at MIT, designing a solution people could immediately access on their own time.

“You know if you’ve been exposed and then you can take appropriate measures,” she said.

The kit is priced at $50 and is currently available for pre-order. The first shipments are slated to go out later this month.

The doctor may need to expand the range of diseases tested. Powassan virus disease is a rare tick-borne viral infection that can range from a mild fever to severe meningitis or encephalitis, and has no effective treatment or vaccine available.

Rhode Island just reported its 10th “rare” case.

The Health Department confirmed that the man, who is in his 70s and lives in Newport Country, began experiencing symptoms of the Powassan virus in late July.

This is Rhode Island’s second Powassan case this year and the 10th overall since the virus was first detected in the Ocean State back in 2016.

Though Powassan virus is rare, reports of cases have increased in recent years. More than 397 cases have been reported in the United States over the past 10 years.

Bourbon virus is also a rare, potentially severe tick-borne illness. This pathogen is linked to Lone Star ticks, and infection can cause fever, fatigue, rash, nausea, and adverse impacts on white blood cells and platelets.

The virus, first identified in Kansas, was detected in a New York man recently.

The patient was reported to have recovered from the illness, according to local media.

Marcos and colleagues published the findings in a study in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene of 107 individuals presenting with fever and other tick-borne illness symptoms between 2019 and 2024, Stony Brook Medicine said.

The Bourbon virus was discovered in 2014, and named after Bourbon County, Kansas, where it was discovered.

Bourbon virus has been confirmed to cause the deaths of at least two people, one in 2014 and another in 2026, Stony Brook Medicine said in a news release.

The expansion of Lyme-carrying ticks and the appearance of once-regional pathogens in new areas demonstrate that Americans can no longer treat tick-borne disease as a niche Northeastern concern.

HHS’s more ambitious strategy is a welcome start, as is the introduction of practical consumer tools paired with enhanced surveillance and research against the growing menu of tick-borne threats.

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