Headlines
As reported by the Danbury News-Times, March 17, 2004.
Scientists Fear Rise of Tick-borne Disease
– Mice with parasite found in Fairfield County
By Robert Miller
While Lyme disease has long been the tick-borne illness that people in Connecticut most fear, a second disease transmitted by ticks soon may be on the rise.
Researchers at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven have uncovered proof Babesia microti, which causes the malaria-like ailment babesiosis, is established in Fairfield County.
"It’s not a surprise it’s expanding,” Dr. John Shanley, a professor of medicine at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington said Tuesday . "I predict it will spread.”
"It’s something doctors should be aware of,” said Louis Magnarelli, an entomologist at the experiment station.
Magnarelli and John Anderson, director of the experiment station, found the protozoa in two mice. The station captured the mice in the yards of two Greenwich residents who were diagnosed with babesiosis in 2002. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s monthly report, "Emerging Infectious Diseases,” published their findings in its March edition.
Magnarelli said finding the protozoan in the mice is "hardcore evidence’’ the parasite is in the most westernmost town in the state. Previously, he said, researchers had found the same evidence of the disease only in New London County, with most of the state’s cases located there.
Humans contract babesiosis the same way they get Lyme disease — from the bite of a black-legged tick, a.k.a. the deer tick. Magnarelli and Anderson’s report points out that, with such a high incidence of Lyme disease in Fairfield County, "the number of cases of babesiosis is likely to increase appreciably in the future.’’
Thomas Forschner, executive director of the Lyme Disease Foundation in Hartford, said the same ticks can carry at least two other diseases in the state — human granulocytic ehrlichiosis and bartonella, or cat scratch fever.
In "Everything You Need to Know About Lyme Disease’’ Karen Vanderhoof-Forschner, the foundation’s co-founder, wrote that a 2000 study of babesiosis found 22 percent involved co-infection with Lyme disease.
Magnarelli and Anderson’s report said 290 cases of babesiosis were diagnosed in Connecticut between 1991 and 2000, with 230 found in New London County. Because babesiosis is more common in vacation spots along the East Coast — Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod, Rhode Island — the report said doctors have assumed many of these patients were infected elsewhere.
But, with the finding of the Babesia microti protozoa in the mice in Greenwich, the report said it’s clear the parasite also can be found in the western corner of the state.
"We’ve found it in Fairfield County, right next to New York,” Magnarelli said. "We believe it’s spreading.”
In Fairfield County, where Lyme disease is widespread, co-infection with babesiosis isn’t new. Maggie Shaw of Newtown, one of the founders of the Newtown Lyme Disease Task Force, has tangled with babesiosis. So has Mary Beth Olah, another task force member.
"It’s been four years, and I’m still being treated for both,” Olah said. "The doctors think, with co-infection, it’s harder to diagnose and treat the two diseases.”
"The physicians around here know so little about Lyme disease,” Shaw said. "They know even less about babesiosis.”
The Babesia microti protozoa attaches to human red blood cells, feeds on them and kills them. Symptoms of the disease include chills, fatigues, night sweats, muscle aches and headaches.
"The headaches were the worst,” said Shaw, who is still being treated for babesiosis.
Like malaria, it can be a hard disease to cure. Shaw is on a combination of Mepron, an anti-parasitic drug, and antibiotics.
"It helps, but it’s very tricky,” Shaw said. "I’m fine until I go off them. Then a few weeks later, I slowly begin to get sick again.”
Like Lyme disease, babesiosis probably is under-reported. People can mistake it for a summer flu. But unlike the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, doctors can do a blood test that can find the ring-shaped Babesia microti in red blood cells.
"You look at the labs, and if you have a low red blood cell count, you have to consider babesiosis,” said UConn’s Shanley.
The disease is most serious for the elderly, those who have compromised immune systems, or those who have had their spleens removed.
"Spleens are big filters,” Shanley said. "People without them are prone to infections. With something like babesiosis, they have trouble fighting it off.”