Type of tick linked to meat allergy found in Winnipeg

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This article was published 03/07/2019 (2603 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A tick that is suspected of causing people to become allergic to red meat has been found on a man in Winnipeg.

Diane Skillen, who found the tick on her boyfriend on Canada Day, credits training on ticks at the vet’s office where she works, Centennial Animal Hospital, with noticing the distinctive white spot on its back that means it’s a female Lone Star tick.

The Lone Star ticks have been spreading north and west in recent years from its natural habitat in the southeastern U.S. scientists are studying the phenomenon of people becoming allergic to red meat after being bitten by these ticks — possibly caused by transmission of a carbohydrate called alpha-gal in the ticks’ saliva — but they can also carry ehrlichiosis bacteria that causes flu-like symptoms, or cause a bullseye-like bite mark that can mimic the symptoms of Lyme disease, called Southern Tick-Associated Rash Illness.

“You hear about these things being in Manitoba, but don’t realize until you see it firsthand,” Skillen said.

They’d been out for a walk on a sidewalk along a man-made lake on Willow Lake Crescent in Southdale on July 1.

“Just walking on a sidewalk and the train tracks near a baseball diamond — so not even an area with a lot of bush and trees,” Skillen said. “But we do have a lot of wildlife and deer and geese there.”

The tick hadn’t bitten him, she said, so she pulled it off and reported it through the province’s tick surveillance website.

She said she was told crews would head out to the area Wednesday to look for more.

Skillen wants people to be aware Lone Star ticks are out there and check themselves after being outside.

“People just keep on thinking that it’s just dog ticks and wood ticks that are in Manitoba but we’re seeing more and more species of ticks that can transmit diseases. Don’t ever think that they’re not out there,” she said.

University of Manitoba tick expert and entomology professor Kateryn Rochon said it’s not the first Lone Star tick that’s been found in Manitoba, and won’t be the last. Her students have collected the ticks as far back as 2014. Three were reported to the province in 2017.

So far, it seems like Lone Star ticks are still mainly coming into Canada on birds, said Janet Sperling, an entomology PhD candidate at the University of Alberta. There’s not an established population anywhere in Canada yet, she said.

It’s also a bad year for black-legged ticks, which can carry Lyme disease, Anaplasmosis and Babesiosis.

The province issued a warning to health care providers June 11 that last year was the worst year so far for tick-borne disease and incidence rates continue to rise, particularly in the Interlake and southeast Manitoba.

Confirmed cases of Lyme disease rose from a single case in 2009 to 28 confirmed cases in 2018. Reported cases have risen sevenfold over that period.

For the first time, Borrelia miyamotoi and deer tick virus have been found in Manitoba, but a letter to health officials on June 11 stated no infections have been reported yet. It can take hours for Lyme disease to be transmitted, but deer tick virus can be transmitted in just 15 minutes, the report stated.

Sperling said as the climate changes, tick habitats are expanding and changing. For example, dog ticks are prevalent in Saskatchewan, though they used to be rare. She said it’s now known that black-legged ticks have been in Manitoba much longer than once was believed.

“We all knew about mosquitoes … but now we also need to be able to recognize ticks, the main types of ticks,” she said. “If you get a tick bite and you get sick, if you can tell the doctor what type of tick — that’s very helpful.”

The province is reminding people to take tick precautions, including: checking yourself, using tick repellent and wearing long pants, tucked into socks. It’s important to remove ticks when they latch on to reduce the likelihood of disease transmission.

Sightings of suspicious ticks can be reported at forms.gov.mb.ca/tickSubmission.

tvanderhart@freepress.mb.ca

@tessavanderhart