Up-close tick encounters are nothing new to Peter Krause. As a tick-borne disease researcher, he's conducted fieldwork where these parasites live. After one trip to Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island where ticks are endemic, Krause had the jarring experience that's become all too common for many others, too.
"I came back, and the next morning noticed what I thought was a little freckle on my chest, so I didn't do anything about it," recalls Krause, a senior research scientist in the Department of Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health. "The next day, I looked again, and it was a bigger freckle, so I knew it was a tick attached to me."
As spring deepens into summer, ticks - those blood-sucking, microbe-transmitting vectors - are back on the radar. Forecasting how prevalent they'll be is tricky. Will a mild winter make for an exploding tick population in spring? Does a winter with little snowfall cut down their numbers? While Krause says predicting the population in any given season can be difficult, one thing is for sure: Ticks are proliferating and spreading, and they're bringing their diseases with them.
In rural or suburban areas, where large deer and mice populations maintain the deer tick population, there's no escaping their crawly presence. But there are steps people can take to avoid ticks, keep calm, and summer on.
In a Q&A, Krause explains what's spreading, what's rare but dangerous, and how to stay safe this summer.
