A tick-borne disease so new it only has a scientific name has been identified in United States patients for the first time, including at least one person from Nantucket. Borrelia miyamotoi is a relative of Lyme disease with similar symptoms including fever, headache, muscle ache, and fatigue.
Unlike Lyme disease, B. miyamotoi presents recurring fevers in patients and does not trigger a bulls-eye rash. Nor does it cause a positive test with traditional Lyme disease testing, said Dr. Sam R. Telford 3rd, a professor of infectious diseases at Tufts University.
In an attempt to quantify the Vineyard deer population, a Mount Holyoke College professor flew across the Island last Friday afternoon taking thousands of aerial infrared photographs for a tick-borne illness study. While a snowy, 20 degree day on Martha’s Vineyard may not be most visitors’ optimal conditions for a flight around the Island, professor of geography Thomas Millette deemed Friday’s weather ideal. A frozen ground, calm winds and an overcast sky all optimize the efficiency of the thermal imaging system developed by Mr. Millette.
Pneumonic tularemia is back. Confirming this year's first case of the pneumonic form of the disease, public health officials said yesterday they are prepared to call in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to investigate.
A four-year-old boy from Newton is this year's first confirmed case of tularemia on the Vineyard, but state and Island health officials stopped far short of sounding an alarm this week over a new outbreak of the rare bacterial infection.
Are rabbits really to blame for last summer's outbreak of tularemia and for what could be a repeat performance this year?
Sam Telford, a parasitologist from Harvard University and the newest member of a team sent here to investigate why such a rare disease has taken hold on the Vineyard, doesn't think so. What's more, Mr. Telford is just as skeptical about the prevailing theory that most victims breathed in air particles contaminated with the tularemia bacteria.
The Harvard scientists who spent the last four days on the Vineyard
collecting clues that could help them solve the Island's biggest
medical mystery came armed with an unusual tool kit: an aerosol can of
automotive starter fluid, two flowerpots painted blue, a bag of apples
and an empty can of Diet Coke.
Suspicions that tularemia has made a comeback on the Vineyard for
the third summer in a row have prompted a series of new health
advisories aimed at the group of people at highest risk for the disease
- landscapers.
From the start, scientists have viewed the outbreak of tularemia on Martha's Vineyard as an ecological puzzle, never a case of bio-terrorism, despite tularemia's recognized status as a bacteria ideally suited for terrorism.
State public health officials yesterday confirmed this year's third case of pneumonic tularemia, the rare and potentially fatal disease that killed a Chilmark man two years ago and has baffled scientists for the last three summers.
