Mice may drive Lyme disease more than deer

Hunting season on mice?

By Amanda Watford, Rhode Island Current

For more than three decades, researchers have been tracking ticks, mice, oak trees and other wildlife in a New York forest to better understand what makes Lyme disease more likely to spread.

Their latest findings challenge some long-held assumptions — including the idea that deer are a major driver of Lyme disease risk.

Researchers at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, a nonprofit environmental research group, found that white-footed mice, not white-tailed deer, are closely linked to the number of young blacklegged ticks, the life stage most likely to infect people with Lyme disease.

A year with a large mouse population was followed by about a 40% increase in nymphal ticks the following year. But more mice don’t necessarily mean a higher percentage of ticks carrying Lyme bacteria. Researchers initially expected the two to rise together because white-footed mice are especially good at transmitting the bacteria to ticks.

The researchers found that other animals, including skunks, squirrels and opossums, also feed larval ticks. Because those animals are less efficient at transmitting the bacteria, the mix of hosts can affect how many ticks become infected.

In other words, mouse populations can help predict how many ticks there will be, but not necessarily how many will carry Lyme bacteria.

The researchers also found that large crops of acorns can set off a chain reaction: More acorns mean more food for mice, which can mean more ticks two years later.

How to avoid tick bites in your yard or while hiking in the woods, and what to do if one starts feasting on you

Tick bites are not good for you

Amanda Roome, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Ticks can be tiny. An adult deer tick is on the left
and a nymph of the same species is on the right,
both sitting on an adult’s finger. CDC

Ticks are small, and you might not notice when they bite, but the diseases they carry can dramatically harm your health.

Each year, deer ticks alone cause an estimated 476,000 new U.S. cases of Lyme disease, which can do long-term damage to a person’s joints, heart and nervous system. You may be hearing about the lone star tick, as well – it can trigger Alpha Gal syndrome, which can leave infected people allergic to red meat and its byproducts, including certain vaccines, medications and products with gelatin.

Several other tick-borne illnesses, including Heartland virus disease, Powassan virus disease, babesiosis and anaplasmosis, can cause serious health problems and, in severe cases, even death.

2026 has been a tough year, with emergency room visits linked to tick bites running high going into summer.

So how can you avoid getting bitten, and what preventive measures actually work? I’m the co-director of the Tick-Borne Disease Center at Binghamton University. Here are some of the questions my team hears – and some advice:

1. Why should I worry about ticks, and how do I know if I’ve been infected?

Ticks can really pack a punch when it comes to how sick they make you. Lyme disease and anaplasmosis, both caused by bacteria that deer ticks can carry, are the most common tick-borne diseases we see in the U.S.

About 70% to 80% of people with Lyme disease will see a rash develop that often looks like a bull’s-eye, and they’ll experience flu-like symptoms, such as a fever, chills, body aches and fatigue. Antibiotics can control the infection, but only if the disease is quickly treated.

Would Hunters Take a Lyme Disease Vaccine?

We Asked

By Bram Sable-Smith

(Kyle Pyatt for KFF Health News)

It’s tick season, possibly the worst in a decade.

More and more Americans are being exposed to these parasites as climate change expands the range where they can survive. 

That means more people are also exposed to the bevy of health conditions they can cause, such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, the alpha-gal-triggered red meat allergy, and, most common of all, Lyme disease.

For the latter, there may be some additional protection on the horizon. Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Valneva announced this spring they plan to seek regulatory approval for a vaccine to protect against Lyme disease. A previous vaccine for Lyme became available in the late 1990s but was pulled only three years later due to lawsuits, public fear of side effects, and a lack of interest.

It’s unclear whether this latest stab at a Lyme disease vaccine will get a warmer reception if it’s approved, especially in the postcovid era of vaccine skepticism.

For a sense of how it might go over with rural populations at high risk of Lyme, KFF Health News spoke with a group of hunters.

Few people spend more time in the woods exposed to ticks.

At the same time, as a collective, hunters skew conservative, rural, and male, according to a survey from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. And these are identities associated with increased hesitancy about or resistance to vaccines, according to Ashley Kirzinger, associate director for Public Opinion and Survey Research at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

At the same time, few people spend more time in the woods exposed to ticks and the possibility of Lyme disease.

Ticks already sending more people to the ER in RI

Rhode Island has a tick expert in its own backyard.

RINewsToday News Team

Tick season is not waiting for summer.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says emergency room visits for tick bites are running higher than normal in many parts of the country. In all U.S. regions except the South Central United States, weekly rates of ER visits for tick bites are the highest for this time of year since 2017.

For Rhode Island, the warning is especially relevant. The state remains a high-risk area for Lyme disease and other tickborne illnesses, with cases typically rising during the warmer months. The Rhode Island Department of Health says most Lyme disease cases are reported during the summer, with a peak in July. Washington County consistently has the highest Lyme disease rate in Rhode Island, with a 2024 rate of 723 cases per 100,000 people.

And Rhode Island has one of the country’s best-known tick resources in its own backyard: the University of Rhode Island’s TickEncounter Resource Center.

Led by Dr. Thomas Mather — URI’s “TickGuy” and one of the nation’s foremost tick experts — TickEncounter provides practical, plain-language guidance on tick identification, tick-bite prevention, and what to do after finding a tick. URI’s TickEncounter site also includes tools and videos to help people understand which ticks are active and how to reduce the risk of tickborne disease.

Mather has long emphasized that conditions matter. Ticks do not like dry weather, while damp, shady, leafy areas create more favorable tick habitat. In a URI summer-prevention update, he said Rhode Islanders can often judge tick risk by looking at yard conditions, including whether lawns and surrounding areas are dry or damp.

Ticks are not the only warm-weather pest concern. The National Pest Management Association is also warning that ticks, mosquitoes, ants and stinging insects become increasingly active as summer approaches. Mosquitoes can breed in small amounts of standing water and may transmit illnesses such as West Nile virus and Zika virus. Stinging insects are also a seasonal risk, especially for people with allergies.

The advice is simple, but important: act early, before pest activity peaks.

What to do now

Beware of quack remedies for Lyme Disease

Unproven Lyme disease treatments regularly offered in US

Stephanie Soucheray, MA

Recently in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, researchers from the University of Minnesota reported that many non-traditional clinics for Lyme disease exist in states where the tick-borne disease is endemic, and the treatments offered at such clinics are often unproven and costly and raise safety concerns. 

For the study, the investigators analyzed treatments offered at standalone clinics in 14 states with high Lyme disease prevalence: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. 

Initial consultation could top $3,000

The authors devised a Google-based search for Lyme clinics in each state and identified 117 clinics. Costs for an initial consultation ranged from $87 to $3,250.

Less than half (53, or 45%) were staffed by a physician with an MD or DO degree. Roughly 20% had a naturopathic doctor on staff, 36 (31%) had an advanced practice provider, and 21 (18%) were staffed by a chiropractor.

Herbs and supplements were the most common treatment offered by the clinics (53 clinics; 45%) followed by non-antibiotic intravenous therapy (26%), unspecified antibiotics (22%), hyperbaric oxygen therapy (15%), and ozone-based therapy (13%).

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy was the most expensive treatment ($85 to $6,400), followed by bioresonance therapy ($250 to $2,950) and oligonucleotide therapy ($2,750), the authors said. 

Could You Have Lyme Disease and Not Know It?

You really want to detect Lyme Disease early because early treatment offers the best results

By RUTGERS UNIVERSITY 

Ask CCA leader Cliff Vanover. He bragged about getting
bitten 50-60 times a year and contracting Lyme Disease
multiple times in an interview with Rhode Island Monthly

Every year in the United States, an estimated 476,000 people are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease. The estimate comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Lyme disease can be treated with antibiotics. The best health outcomes are most likely when diagnosis is made within the first weeks of infection. If left untreated, the effects of Lyme disease can linger for years and cause neurological problems, arthritis, and a host of other ailments. But because diagnosing Lyme can be difficult, some cases of the disease go undetected long after initial transmission.

To help clinicians improve Lyme disease outcomes, physician-scientists at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and Stony Brook University have published a guidance article in NEJM Evidence, The New England Journal of Medicine’s digital digest, on the informed evaluation and treatment of Lyme in its early stages.

Lead author Steven E. Schutzer, a professor of medicine at Rutgers Health, discussed how clinicians can approach patients who have the possibility of an early Lyme disease infection.

Time to talk ticks again

I HATE ticks

By Will Collette

We are getting into peak season for ticks in southern Rhode Island. If you live here, you already know that ticks can find a way to get on you even in winter – any day where temps climb above freezing. You also know ticks carry diseases so you really don’t want to get bit.

Hospital emergency rooms are already reporting a sharp uptick in patients coming in for treatment of tick bites.

We have to watch out for American Dog ticks, blacklegged deer ticks, and lone star ticks in Rhode Island because they can transmit Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and other tick-borne illnesses.

The Centers for Disease Control report a rise in cases of Babesiosis, mainly from deer ticks (which is practically Rhode Island’s official state noxious bug). Symptoms of Babesiosis include fever, muscle and joint pain and headache. Illness can range from mild to severe, and it can be fatal in rare cases. Infections can also be asymptomatic, so patients may not always know to be tested.

How's the vaccine hunt going?

Efforts by Pfizer to develop a vaccine for Lyme disease suffered a setback that led Pfizer to suspend trial sites in numerous locations, such as Block Island.

According to the Block Island Times, Pfizer said it was discontinuing “a significant percentage of participants in the United States who had been enrolled in the Vaccine Against Lyme for Outdoor Recreationists Phase 3 clinical study.” The company stresses that the reason is not due to vaccine safety or “adverse events,” but because of violations of “Good Clinical Practice” by a subcontractor conducting the tests at several sites.

The BI Times further reports “the subcontractor is Boston-based Care Access, which was conducting the vaccine trial on Block Island, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket, and in several other places. The cancellation affects about half of the people who signed up in the United States – 3,500 of 7,000 people.”

They noted that “Alison Warfel, Chief Operating Officer of Block Island Health Services, told The Block Island Times that she believed that Pfizer was planning to go with a different third-party vendor on Block Island and that participants would be able to remain in the study.”

Hopefully that will happen because most people in our area (except maybe the MAGAnuts) would welcome a vaccine to prevent Lyme disease.

New tick-borne disease diagnosed in the US

While so much of the focus of studies on tick-borne diseases is on Lyme disease, there is another disease of rising concern in addition to Babesiosis carried by deer ticks.

That’s Borrelia lonestari bacteria carried by the lone star tick. Despite the name, they are not confined to Texas (as I would wish them to be). I’ve actually been bitten by one in Charlestown. It was the first and only time I’ve had a tick bite that actually hurt, almost like a hornet sting.

So far, there’s only been one case in the US, a 75 year old Alabama. It nearly killed him.

He sought treatment after a month of extreme fatigue, recurring fever and chills, sweating, headache, and dizziness. Then high fever and a stuporous condition. Antibiotics helped knock down the illness which was eventually diagnosed as tickborne relapsing fever (TBRF) caused by Borrelia lonestari bacteria.

TickEncounter Resource Center

Because Rhode Island is right at the epicenter of so much tick activity, we’ve developed some fine resources. Under the leadership of renowned tick expert Dr. Thomas Mather at URI, we have a one-stop full-service tick center at the Center for Vector-Borne Disease and its TickEncounter Resource Center. CLICK HERE.

On that website, you can find tons of practical information about how to cope with ticks. It’s done is clear, plain language with a light touch of humor.

They can also be your first stop in checking out the endless array of opinions on the best way to repel or kill ticks, treat tick bites including how to safely remove ticks, the merits of doxycycline as prophylaxis against Lyme disease and more to help you decide what you should do to protect yourself and your family.

Grant should boost fight against Lyme Disease

URI entomologist wins $2.6 million NIH grant to study evolution of Lyme disease bacteria in deer ticks

Tony LaRoche

University of Rhode Island entomologist Jannelle Couret is tipping the way we understand the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. Instead of looking at it from the human perspective, she and an interdisciplinary team of researchers are taking the view of the tick.

While the bacteria – Borrelia burgdorferi – is the pathogen that causes Lyme disease in humans, its presence is quite different in blacklegged ticks that pick up the bacteria from feeding on white-footed mice. For the ticks, the bacteria doesn’t cause disease. It might even be beneficial.

For the next four years, Couret’s team will research the ecological factors driving the evolution of Borrelia burgdorferi in blacklegged ticks thanks to a $2.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. The grant is part of the prestigious Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease (EEID) program, run by the NIH, National Science Foundation, and U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Hope we can learn from the Lobsters

Lobsters Provide Lesson About Economic Damage Being Caused by the Climate Crisis

By ROGER WARBURTON/ecoRI News contributor

Rhode Island’s lobster catch declined more than 70 percent between 1967 and 2014 because of warming coastal waters. Purple regions denote high levels of catch. (NOAA)

Editor’s note: Part 1 of a three-part series about the economic harm suffered by Rhode Island because of the climate crisis.

If present trends continue, by the end of the century, the cost of global warming could be as high as $1 billion annually for Providence County alone, according to data from a 2017 research paper. That’s about $1,600 per person per year. Every year.

But, before we talk about the future, let’s discuss the economic damage that has already occurred in Rhode Island because of warming temperatures.

Like rich Bostonians, Rhode Island’s lobsters have moved to Maine. In 2018, Maine landed 121 million pounds of lobsters, valued at more than $491 million, and up 11 million pounds from 2017. It wasn’t always so.

Andrew Pershing, an oceanographer with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, has noted that lobsters have migrated north as climate change warms the ocean. In Rhode Island, for instance, days when the water temperature of Narragansett Bay is 80 degrees or higher are becoming more common. From 1960 to 2015, the bay’s mean surface water temperatures rose by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit, according to research data.

A 2018 research paper Pershing co-authored said ocean temperatures have risen to levels that are favorable for lobsters off northern New England and Canada but inhospitable for them in southern New England. The research found that warming waters, ecosystem changes, and differences in conservation efforts led to the simultaneous collapse of the lobster fishery in southern New England and record-breaking landings in the Gulf of Maine.

He told Science News last year that with rocky bottoms, kelp, and other things that lobsters love, climate change has turned the Gulf of Maine into a “paradise for lobsters.”

However, in the formerly strong lobster fishing grounds of Rhode Island, the situation is grim. South of Cape Cod, the lobster catch fell from a peak of about 22 million pounds in 1997 to about 3.3 million pounds in 2013, according to the 2018 paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lobsters provide interesting lessons on the impact of the climate crisis.

A conservation program called V-notching helped protect Maine’s lobster population. “Starting a similar conservation program earlier in southern New England would have helped insulate them from the hot water they’ve experienced over the last couple decades,” Malin Pinsky, a marine scientist with Rutgers University, told Boston.com two years ago.

Rhode Island’s lack of conservation efforts in the face of the growing climate crisis contributed to the collapse of its lobster fishery. Doing nothing or too little in the face of a changing climate can be economically devastating.

Chronic Lyme disease

It's a real thing
John Nathaniel Aucott, Johns Hopkins University

Lyme disease patients hold a rally outside the Irish Parliament.
Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images 

Her symptoms started quickly: neck pain, extreme fatigue and intermittent fever and chills. 

The woman had been healthy until then, and since she enjoyed gardening and landscaping at her rural Maryland home, she wondered if a tick bite might have given her Lyme disease although she had not noticed the telltale bull’s-eye skin lesion.

Her doctor told her it was likely just a virus. The next day, she felt worse and went to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with mononucleosis.

The woman, a nurse in her 40s, returned to the emergency room a few weeks later with breathing trouble and low blood pressure. Doctors tested her for Lyme disease and found it had spread to her heart, a rare manifestation of Lyme disease that can be fatal.

Antibiotics resolved her heart and respiratory symptoms, but the fatigue, as well as joint pain and trouble concentrating, continued. Doctors told her it was just the recovery process, but the symptoms were debilitating and didn’t go away. It wasn’t until several months later, when she got a second opinion, that she was diagnosed with post-treatment Lyme disease, a known complication of Lyme disease.

“I felt dismissed and abandoned,” she later told me. “No one stopped to listen to my story and advocate for me.”

Her experience gives insight into a highly controversial medical term: chronic Lyme disease.
Because there are no definitive tests or treatments for this condition, patients who have symptoms can be dismissed by the medical establishment. Many are denied medications such as antibiotics they believe can control the chronic infections they suspect they have.

I am the former chair of the tick-borne diseases working group at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and a medical researcher who has studied chronic Lyme disease for 20 years. It has become obvious to me that the problem is deeper and more complex than the polarized debate over the controversy would make one believe.

My colleagues and I have closely followed the health of Lyme disease patients as they recover, and what we have discovered runs counter to the mainstream teaching about Lyme disease. 

Lyme disease vaccine doesn't exist

Yearly antibody shot shows promise at preventing infection
Mark Klempner, University of Massachusetts Medical School

Ticks can carry bacteria that causes Lyme Disease.
CDC via AP, CC BY 

Lyme disease has become an insidious epidemic in the United States. Caused by bacteria transmitted by an infected tick bite, symptoms can include arthritis, cardiac and neurological problems if left untreated. 

It is the most common tick-borne illness in the United States, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that around 300,000 people likely contract the disease each year.

Scientists, doctors and ecologists have worked for decades to slow the spread of Lyme and the blacklegged, or deer, ticks that carry the disease-causing bacteria. However, the ticks’ range continues to expand. 

Today, over 50% of the American population lives in an area where these ticks are found.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a vaccine against Lyme in 1998, but it was met by controversy and pulled from the market three years later. Efforts continue today to create a human vaccine as well as stop the spread of Lyme by other means, including using gene-editing to immunize mice that can transmit the bacteria to ticks, killing deer and using pesticides to control ticks.

My colleagues and I have been working on a different kind of prevention: a yearly injection. I am an infectious diseases physician-scientist and have been studying and working toward preventing Lyme disease for much of my career. I also oversee UMass Medical School’s MassBiologics, the only nonprofit, FDA-licensed manufacturer of vaccines and biologics in the United States.

Our method, known as Lyme PrEP, delivers a single anti-Lyme antibody directly to a person rather than triggering the patient’s own immune system to make many antibodies as vaccines do. It is designed to be a seasonal shot that people can get once a year before tick season begins. 

We have published several peer-reviewed articles on this methodology, including its success in mice and nonhuman primates. Later this year, we are scheduled to begin our first human phase 1 trial.

Lyme disease symptoms could be mistaken for COVID-19, with serious consequences

Prompt medical attention also needed for Lyme disease
Jory Brinkerhoff, University of Richmond

Ticks like this one, shown magnified with an electron microscope,
can transmit bacteria that cause severe illnesses in humans.
Fernando Otalora-Luna/University of Richmond, CC BY-SA

Summer is field season for ecologists like me, a time when my colleagues, students and I go out into fields and woods in search of ticks to study the patterns and processes that allow disease-causing microbes – primarily bacteria and viruses – to spread among wildlife and humans.

That field work means we’re also at risk of getting the very diseases we study. 

I always remind my crew members to pay close attention to their health. 

If they get a fever or any other signs of sickness, they should seek medical treatment immediately and tell their doctor that they may have been exposed to ticks.

When summer flu-like illnesses develop in anyone who spends time outdoors in areas where ticks are common, tick-transmitted diseases like Lyme disease should be considered a likely culprit.

This summer, however, the global emergence of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 is presenting a whole new set of challenges for diagnosing Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.

Lyme disease shares a number of symptoms with COVID-19, including fever, achiness and chills. Anyone who mistakes Lyme disease for COVID-19 could unknowingly delay necessary medical treatment, and that can lead to severe, potentially debilitating symptoms.

New test promises fast results on Lyme Disease

New test diagnoses Lyme disease within 15 minutes

Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science

Some 300,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Lyme disease every year. 

Caused by Borrelia burgdorferi and transmitted by the bite of infected Ixodes ticks, the disease if left untreated can cause serious neurologic, cardiac, and/or rheumatologic complications.

Current testing for Lyme disease, called the standard 2-tiered approach or the STT, involves running two complex assays (ELISA and western blot) to detect antibodies against the bacterium, and requires experienced personnel in a lab, and a few hours to carry out and interpret. 

A team led by Sam Sia, professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, has developed a rapid microfluidic test that can detect Lyme disease with similar performance as the STT in a much shorter time -- 15 minutes.

No, you are not under attack by mutant ticks

No, Lyme disease is not an escaped military bioweapon, despite what conspiracy theorists say
Sam Telford, Tufts University

Could Lyme disease in the U.S. be the result of an accidental release from a secret bioweapons experiment? 

Could the military have specifically engineered the Lyme disease bacterium to be more insidious and destructive – and then let it somehow escape the lab and spread in nature?

Is this why 300,000 Americans are diagnosed annually with this potentially debilitating disease?

It’s an old conspiracy theory currently enjoying a resurgence with lots of sensational headlines and tweets. Even Congress has ordered that the Pentagon must reveal whether it weaponized ticks.
And it’s not true.

Ticks can indeed carry infectious agents that could be used as biological weapons. Military research has long focused on ticks. Sites around Long Island Sound, near the military’s Plum Island research lab, were some of the first places where the American Lyme disease epidemic was identified.

But there was no release of the Lyme disease agent or any other onto American soil, accidental or otherwise, by the military.

Mouse – Tick conspiracy?

Mouse, not just tick: New genome heralds change in Lyme disease fight

University of California - Irvine

As Lyme disease increases, researchers have taken a significant step toward finding new ways to prevent its transmission. The experts, who include a pioneer in Lyme disease discovery, have sequenced the genome of the animal carrying the bacteria that causes the illness. 

The advance by researchers at the University of California, Irvine and colleagues provides a launching pad for fresh approaches to stopping Lyme disease from infecting people.

Results of their study appear today in Science Advances.

The scientists dedicated four years to decoding the genetic makeup of the white-footed mouse Peromyscus leucopus, which harbors the Lyme disease-causing bacteria. Unlike mice that scurry into human homes, these rodents inhabit forests, shrubbery and wetlands. People become infected when a tick bites them after feeding on a white-footed mouse carrying the bacteria.

Lyme disease resists treatment

Lyme bacteria survive 28-day course of antibiotics months after infection

Tulane University

Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, announced results of two papers published in the peer-reviewed journals PLOS ONE and American Journal of Pathology, that seem to support claims of lingering symptoms reported by many patients who have already received antibiotic treatment for the disease.

Based on a single, extensive study of Lyme disease designed by Tulane University researchers, the study employed multiple methods to evaluate the presence of Borrelia burgdorferi spirochetes, the bacteria that cause Lyme disease, before and after antibiotic treatment in primates. 

The study also measured the antibody immune response to the bacteria both pre- and post- treatment, as this is how current diagnostics typically evaluate Lyme disease in humans.

The data show that living B. burgdorferi spirochetes were found in ticks that fed upon the primates and in multiple organs after treatment with 28 days of oral doxycycline. The results also indicated that the immune response to the bacteria varied widely in both treated and untreated subjects.

Gävle Goat Lives, Wooten speaks, 2014 ends and lots of job openings

Charlestown Tapas

By Will Collette

Gävle Goat Lives!

This is how the Goat usually ends up, but not this year

For the first time since Progressive Charlestown started monitoring it, Sweden’s Gävle Goat (Gävlebocken) made it through the Christmas holiday without being torched. As regular readers may recall, Gävle, Sweden has a holiday tradition of erecting a 40-foot tall goat made of sticks and straw that stands on display in the town square throughout the Advent season. 

In most years, the Gävlebocken gets burned to the ground by vandals. But not this year.

It survived, thanks to vigilant volunteers and the idea of ringing the town square with a taxis.

They want to be Gavle Goats when they grow up

The Gävlebocken has his own blog where he makes fun of the right-wing jerks who run the town government. 

Speaking of which, the All-CCA Charlestown Town Council encourages you to attend this year’s Charlestown New Year’s Eve bonfire at 4:30 PM (on New Year’s Eve, Wednesday, of course) at Ninigret Park.

This year, the Council has mandated that five Democrats be tossed onto the fire, but as is their usual policy, they want the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee to draw up a list of which five it will be.

Speaking of New Year’s

For the best wrap-up of the events of 2014, don’t miss Dave Barry’s 2014 Year in Review in the Miami Herald. Click here.

Virginia Wooten Speaks

Every so often, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance brings their President Virginia Wooten forward to deliver an encyclical to the CCA Party faithful. Rarely seen or heard, Wooten’s words are to be savored much like the Oracle at Delphi. This year, she (or one of her elves) penned a Holiday Message to Charlestown which ran in the Westerly Sun.

In it, Wooten declares Charlestown to be the best place in Rhode Island and tells the faithful that “the newly elected Charlestown Town Council members and planning commissioners will strive to achieve the type of government that the citizens of our town expect and deserve.”

That's pretty much what Alexis de Tocqueville supposedly said with an irony not evident in Ms. Wooten's letter to the editor, when he said, "In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve." Some say the quote is misattributed and credit instead Joseph de Maistre who's 1811 line read, "every nation gets the government it deserves." 

Promising research on Lyme Disease

Lyme Disease Vaccine Shows Promise in Clinical Trial

From ScienceDaily.com

Telltale rash associated with Lyme Disease

Editor's note: Lyme disease is all too common in Charlestown given our high tick population. 

The results of a phase 1/2 clinical trial in Europe of an investigational Lyme disease vaccine co-developed by researchers at Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and at Baxter International Inc., a U.S. based healthcare company, revealed it to be promising and well tolerated, according to a research paper published online in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The vaccine was shown to produce substantial antibodies against all targeted species of Borrelia, the causative agent of Lyme disease in Europe and the United States. Baxter International conducted the clinical trial of the vaccine.

Since the early 1990s, Benjamin Luft, MD, the Edmund D. Pellegrino Professor of Medicine at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, and the late John Dunn, Ph.D., a biologist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, spearheaded the initial development of the original vaccine antigen concept, and together with researchers at Baxter International helped bioengineer the formulation used in the clinical trial.

Lyme disease and land use

By Linda Felaco

Tick populations have been soaring this year thanks to the unusually mild winter that allowed more of them to survive. Plus tick populations follow a multiyear cycle in which a drought causes oak trees to produce more acorns, which swells populations of small rodents, which spread tick larvae. So the drought conditions of two years ago are also giving us more ticks this year. A study earlier this year also showed a correlation between increased incidence of Lyme disease and the decline of red foxes, which are very effective at reducing the population of small rodents.

Not only are there more ticks, but last week, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the discovery of a brand-new tick-borne pathogen, one of several that have been discovered recently.

Why the sudden emergence of new tick-borne diseases? 

Bits and pieces

News for you, with an emphasis on science and technology

Lyme Disease and Foxes
A continued increase of Lyme disease in the United States, once linked to a recovering deer population, may instead be explained by a decline of the red fox, UC Santa Cruz researchers suggest in a new study.

Dwindling numbers of red foxes, the authors suggest, might be attributed to growing populations of coyotes, now top predators in some eastern regions where wolves and mountain lions are extinct.