Be Well: Understanding Mosquito and Tick-Borne Illnesses Ahead of Your Summer Ventures

<div class="block">Dr. Daniel Griffin, chief of division of infectious disease and travel medicine at Optum Health, joined Cheddar News to talk about the rise in the presence of disease-carrying insects and mites during the summer.</div>

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Our battle against the bugs is already here. Mosquito antic season is shaping up to be severe this year. Mosquitoes as we know, thrive in heat and humidity and as our summers get warmer, populations of the bugs are really booming. We know mosquitoes can carry the risk of disease, things like West Nile virus and malaria, which, you know, of course, we, you know, are seeing again here in the US for the first time in 20 years. So here to talk about the risk and how to protect ourselves is Dr Daniel Griffin, he is the chief of the division of infectious disease and travel medicine at awesome health. So let's just start talking about mosquitoes and what's going on this year. It's quite something, right. I mean, normally we just thought of mosquitoes as annoying, right. I'm gonna get these bites scratchy. How do I avoid that? But now we're starting to hear that the mosquitoes, the bugs may actually carry things that we need to worry more about. You know, we had the West Nile, right? And that was a number of years ago and that's a little bit in the background. Um, but now we just had a number of cases of malaria in the US. We're up to six in Florida, one in Texas. Um, I know, people probably don't know, but the US used to be malaria endemic and anyone little House on the Prairie, maybe you are a fan out of Kansas all the way up to Washington DC. We actually had malaria. We've got the right mosquitoes here. Um, so things are getting a little more worrisome. Now, why would that all of a sudden show back up again. I think a big thing is travel, right? People are traveling again. And so if you're somewhere where malaria is endemic and you have malaria and it's in your system and you've got the, the bite of a mosquito and then that mosquito then bites somebody else. You can actually see that. And there is an area in Sarasota, I think it is down there in Florida where actually the mosquitoes now have malaria in the population. Let's talk about those ticks because we are also hearing, yes, obviously Lyme Disease and, and you know, for someone who ends up getting Lyme disease from a tick bite, that's terrible. But there's also some other, uh you know, different things that are calling causing paralysis. So it's, um, it's really troublesome. Uh you know, there was this whole idea with, with, well, in medicine in general, you can only have one thing at the same time. You can have more than one and So a lot of our ticks don't just have one pathogen in them. They might have multiple. So you might get Lyme disease, but you also get something called, there's a tick paralysis, there's anaplasma. And now a lot of people are learning about Basia. That's what I was gonna make you say. Can you please say that? So, I don't have to. But what is that? Well, we used to call it Nantucket fever when it was first described out of Nantucket Island and a Portuguese fishermen. Um, but now we're starting to see more and more cases as ticks with this parasite are actually in our area. So now how do we protect ourselves? You know, because prevention, I want to prevent it. And then what do I do if I think something's wrong? Yeah. So the, the mosquitoes and the ticks, um, similar things, right? Just think about when you might be in a situation where you might be exposed. So, mosquitoes, this is one of my favorite words. They tend to be crepuscular. They bite us in dawn and dusk right early in the morning at the end of the day where it's sort of those high points, you know, long pants, long shirts, a place where there's a breeze insect repellent. So let's minimize the amount of bites from the mosquitoes. Similar issue with ticks, but also ticks are gonna be in certain areas, right? So if I a tick off me or I, you know, do that? How do I know that this bite is bad? You always hear about that bull's eye. But is that specific to Lyme disease or is that, you know? How do I know? Yeah. So in general we say the mosquito that you hear buzzing is not the one that bit you, right? Or that tick that you see may not be the one that makes you sick because the, the ticks that carry a lot of the diseases are so small, they're the size of a poppy seat. So a lot of times they're the ones you don't see until they start to fill up. And by then they've been on you for a day or two once they've been on for a couple of days is when we start to worry. And that is classic, this bull's eye, we say about 90% of the time. Hopefully that's true. You end up with a bull's eye if you get something like a lime from that tick. So, um, one you want to avoid the ticks if possible. Stay out of those places long pants. Um, but then let's say this happens, you find a tick on yourself, then you actually want to seek care when you first come in right away, your immune system hasn't had a chance to respond. So those antibodies, those blood tests, you don't need those right up front. Those won't be positive for 2 to 3 weeks. So we have to jump in based on the scenario. Maybe we see that bull's eye. We jump in, maybe Doxycycline or one of the alternatives. Um, 7 to 10 days is what we recommend for treatment. And then 2 to 3 weeks later you do the blood test to find out. Now, Babesia, the parasite that might be in there right away, you could do a blood smear. We have PC R testing for that. Ok. All right. So much to talk about. Thank you so much, Doctor Griffin. I really do appreciate it.