DEAR DR. GOTT: I’m a 70-year-old female. When I was a child in a small town in Maryland, I can remember every spring having to go and get a dreaded tick shot. These shots left my arm sore and almost useless for about three days. However, I never remember getting a tick on me. Now I live in Virginia where, after the small towns and cities of Maryland, this is country to me. I take ticks off me every day in the season for them, but no one ever mentions those dreaded tick shots. Is this just something that happened back in my little town? Even when I mention it to people my age, they have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t hear of anyone dying of tick fever anymore. Are ticks not as dangerous these days?
Has something been incorporated into our childhood inoculations or does modern medication simply take care of tick fever when it occurs today? I’m puzzled by this and would like to know if you can answer my questions.
DEAR READER: You failed to mention which ticks you are talking about, so I am unsure which tick to discuss.
Colorado tick fever is an acute viral infection that is transmitted through the bite of an infected wood tick and should not be confused with the bacteria tick-borne Rocky Mountain spotted fever. There is also the possibility of dogs picking up infected wood ticks and transmitting the disease. Symptoms are similar to those of a cold: fever, chills, aches and pains. A vaccine was created for Colorado tick fever but was never manufactured.
If you are referring to the tick-borne Lyme disease, this was discovered only about 35 years ago, in 1975, and was named after a small town in Connecticut. This infectious disease is caused by a spirochete that thrives in deer ticks. It is spread to humans by a tick bite. Your childhood state of Maryland is one of the top 10 in the United States for ticks, preceded by Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York and Wisconsin, and followed by New Hampshire and Maine. Therefore, I can appreciate that people in Virginia might not know about this disorder, but I would think they might know about tick fever from wood ticks. I am from Connecticut, and Lyme disease is extremely prevalent in my area. I have treated more cases than I can remember.
In any event, the disease usually presents with a fever, muscle and joint pain, rash or rashes, or a bull’s-eye ring or rings anywhere from three days to several weeks following the bite of an infected tick. A vaccine to treat Lyme was developed, but production stopped in 2002 due to low demand, so it is no longer available to humans. The three-dose vaccine was geared toward people between the ages of 15 and 70 who resided in endemic areas of the northeastern and north central United States. This translated to the duration of immunity and need for any booster shots beyond the third dose to remain unknown. For a time several years ago, I immunized patients who insisted on receiving the course of treatment. Some experienced such unpleasant side effects following the first or second dose that they finally (and thankfully) refused to continue.
Blood testing can be ordered by a physician and may help to diagnose or rule out the disorder. However, a visual examination by a physician familiar with Lyme might be all that is necessary to make a diagnosis. Treatment for early-stage Lyme is commonly two to three weeks of an oral antibiotic.
