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In this episode of “Lab Medicine Rounds,” Justin Kreuter, M.D., sits down with Bobbi Pritt, M.D., professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology and division chair for the Department of Clinical Microbiology at Mayo Clinic, to discuss why this year’s tick season is more severe than others.
A Mayo Clinic podcast for laboratory professionals, physicians, and students, hosted by Justin Kreuter, M.D., assistant professor of laboratory medicine and pathology at Mayo Clinic, featuring educational topics and insightful takeaways to apply in your practice.
(electronic intro music)
- Hello, this is Lab Medicine
Rounds, a curated podcast
for physicians, laboratory
professionals and students.
I'm your host, Justin Kreuter
at The Bow Tie Bandit of Blood
Transfusion Medicine
Pathologist at Mayo Clinic.
Today, we're rounding
with Dr. Bobbi Pritt,
Professor of Laboratory
Medicine and Pathology
and Division Chair
for the Department of Clinical
Microbiology at Mayo Clinic
here in Rochester, Minnesota.
And we're gonna be talking
about this year's tick season
and what it means for individuals
working in the hospital setting.
So thanks for joining us today, Dr. Pritt.
- Oh, it's my pleasure to be here.
- Hey, so what does this
season, tick season look like?
I've been hearing that it's
predicted to be severe.
What is that?
- Yeah, well, that's what the
predictions are right now.
Of course, that could change,
and it's hard to what
the weather's gonna be.
But yes, it looks like
because of our milder winter
and that's gonna allow
the ticks to survive,
more ticks to survive our
cold Minnesota winters
and other parts of the world,
or parts of our country,
that, yeah, there may be more
ticks out and about this year.
And we're certainly seeing
that in the laboratory.
We've received a lot of
tick submission so far.
- I see.
So, I mean, you mentioned
some of the weather kind
of patterns changing.
What are the different things that make it
that kind of influence on the tick season?
I guess not being, you know,
working as a subspecialist in
in microbiology, like you are,
I'm not really attuned to,
or I don't recall hearing about, you know,
the tick season being severe or not.
- Yeah, you know, it's
complicated, it's multifactorial,
and weather is indeed a
pretty important part of it.
So if you have warmer, wetter winters,
you're going have more ticks survive.
And that means that they are come out
and if you have an earlier spring,
they're going be out earlier.
They come out as soon as the snow melts.
But of course, they need to feed
and they feed on small animals, initially,
small rodents, for example.
So if you happen to have
an abundance of rodents
because perhaps there was
an abundance of acorns,
then you may have more
food source for the ticks.
And then that may increase
the number of ticks.
And then last, but not least,
you also have human behavior.
If humans are out and about
and going out into the woods
because it's safer than, you know,
being in close contact because of COVID,
then that could also increase
the risk of tickborne diseases.
So it's really the ticks themselves,
what they feed on, the
so-called reservoir host,
which includes small
mammals, rodents, deer
and humans, of course.
And then human behavior
and what we're doing as far
as expanding into populations
where ticks may be.
If we're out mowing our lawn,
if we're creating new housing
development in forested areas
and we're infringing upon that region
where ticks, and deer
and rodents are found,
there may be more contact.
- Yeah, certainly.
I know my family, we've
been doing a lot of these,
I've been enjoying our
post-dinner walks during COVID.
But yeah, we have been
getting out quite a bit more
than maybe we have in previous
kind of pre-COVID summers.
- Yeah, it's been really
interesting, Dr. Kreuter.
So we follow all of
the infectious disease,
all the organisms in the
laboratory that we test for.
Some have taken a real hit.
Influenza was down during COVID,
probably because we were
masking, and social distancing
and that's a respiratory virus.
Enterovirus is down.
Bordetella pertussis is down.
But tickborne infections is up.
And I think that's because it is something
that people can do while
they're socially distancing.
And yet the ticks don't care about COVID,
they're gonna bite you regardless.
They don't socially distance
(Dr. Kreuter laughs)
- Much to our chagrin.
- I know.
- So you mentioned, you know,
working in the laboratory,
what you're starting to notice.
And I'm curious for, you
know, what does that mean for,
you know, all of us, you know, who work
and also for our students
who might be listening
that are learning in our hospitals.
What does the severe tick
summer mean for all of us?
- Well, I think it means
that we're going to see
more laboratory tests
surrounding tickborne diseases.
So in my laboratory in
clinical microbiology,
that may mean seeing more ticks
being submitted for identification,
more tickborne pathogen tests
for things like Lyme disease,
anaplasmosis, babesiosis.
But it's going to impact
other areas of the laboratory as well.
So for example, one of
the hallmark findings
in the laboratory for
many tickborne infections
is leukopenia, specifically lymphopenia,
thrombocytopenia,
and elevated liver function tests.
So those are some basic chemistries
that people may see
increased in orders for,
to evaluate patients
that potentially have
a tickborne infection.
And then of course,
some infections have
non-infectious entities
in their differential.
So we may see more ordering
for things that could be tickborne
but could be something else.
So it could impact across the
laboratory in different areas.
- Oh, have you been getting
some invitations to kind of talk
with some of our clinical colleagues
about that differential diagnosis?
I imagine that's something
to kind of revisit
with the learners periodically over time.
- Yeah, I try to do that every year.
We always host some educational events
for tickborne pathogens in general.
And we do it for laboratorians,
for our clinical colleagues
and also for the general public.
I usually give at least
one talk every year
on how to protect yourself from tick bites
because that's so important.
- Oh, that's awesome.
Hey, so you mentioned about the infections
that are associated with ticks
and about that differential diagnosis.
And maybe I'm going off in
the wrong direction here.
Please let me know if to reel back in.
But, you know, a lot of
times with microbiology,
I guess with bacteriology,
I think about kind of
superbugs and kind of
is there any concern with something
about severe tick season?
You know, are these
infections going to be worse
and more severe in the same kind of way?
- So, great question.
At this point, the tickborne pathogens,
at least the bacteria that
cause tickborne illness,
seem to be susceptible to
our standard drugs we use,
which is mostly doxycyline,
which is an antibacterial agent.
Having said that, we always are monitoring
to look for cases that don't respond
to your typical therapies.
And I will also mention
that there are things like
viruses and parasites,
which don't respond to
antibacterials at all,
and we don't have any
effective treatments for.
We're seeing more cases of viral diseases,
like Powassan virus, Heartland
virus, Bourbon virus.
Babesiosis is a parasite
that also doesn't respond
to antibacterials.
So to answer your first question,
we are not seeing any
superbugs, yet, hopefully never.
But we are seeing things more and more
that we just don't really
have good treatments for.
And that would be right now the viruses.
- Hmm, I gotcha.
So, you know, going forward,
I'm trying to get a a sense
of this kind of this cycle on
what are some of those factors
that make this, you know,
a worse or more severe tick season.
And, you know, is this gonna be
kind of undulating, oscillating
over time going forward?
Or is this something where, you know,
it's likely to get progressively worse?
I guess what are experts
in the community saying?
- Yeah, it's complicated.
I wish I had a crystal ball to predict.
But we do well understand
some certain patterns.
So first of all, warmer,
milder and wetter winters
means that more ticks survive.
So with global warming and climate change,
if we continue to see warmer winters,
that's going to increase the
risk for tickborne diseases.
Earlier springs mean
people are out and about.
Longer summers and falls mean
people are outside longer.
So anything that's gonna
change those patterns
is going to influence tickborne diseases.
And then also ticks are migrating.
They're expanding their
ranges substantially,
from the Northeast, the Upper Midwest,
up into Canada, we have
the Blacklegged tick.
And those ranges continue
to expand every year,
putting more people at risk
for things like Lyme disease,
babesiosis and anaplasmosis.
Now, there's a caveat, though,
that as the warm weather
gets very hot and dry,
then the ticks will often go into hiding,
'cause they out very quickly.
So hot weather in and of itself
doesn't necessarily mean more ticks.
But when it's accompanied by
high humidity and moisture,
then that's perfect
weather for tick survival.
- I see.
You know, one of the things
that our audience may not know,
I guess I've seen photos of you
doing research in the field.
So, you know, a lot of times
we think about medical
researchers with Erlenmeyer flasks
in a very sterile lab,
but you do a lot of research in the field.
I was curious if you have a favorite story
about those experiences
of leading some of these
students and other colleagues
into the field to do some
of this tick based research.
'Cause I think this is just fascinating
in an aspect of your practice
that just most people aren't aware of.
- Yeah, thanks Dr. Kreuter.
It is a fun part of my job.
So I'll give you a little background.
I was able to do a Mayo
Foundation Scholar Program
right after my fellowship here.
And I went
to the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
and took classes in
entomology, parasitology.
Got my master's degree
in medical parasitology.
And learned how to go out into the field
and sample for ticks and mosquitoes.
And then you could take
those ticks and mosquitoes,
and go back to the lab and test
them for various pathogens.
So I was very fortunate
once I came back to Mayo
to be involved in discovery efforts
for two new tickborne bacterial pathogens.
And because they were brand
new, we knew nothing about them,
we didn't know what type
of tick transmitted them.
So we wanted to ask those questions
of, what is the tick
that's the culprit here?
Who's the vector?
So for several years in a row,
I went out into the
field and collected ticks
using those methods I
learned back in London.
And I would bring with me
undergrad students,
internal medicine residents,
pathology residents, clinical
microbiology fellows.
And I even would team up with the CDC,
and the Minnesota and
Wisconsin Departments of Health
and University of Wisconsin.
So we've had kinda tick parties
where we all go out and drag for ticks.
And then we, you know, have a big cookout
and have fun afterwards.
And then we sit down at the
microscopes, identify the ticks,
and then I would bring
them back to my laboratory
and test them like we
would test a human sample.
Not something we routinely
do, but can do for research.
So those have been great experiences
and it's allowed us to really understand
our two new emerging pathogens a bit more.
So haven't done it in a
couple years since COVID,
but I don't know, you know,
there's always new pathogens out there.
And if we discover something else,
I'll be right out into the field again.
- Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for
sharing that story with us.
I think it nicely captures this, you know,
interprofessional, you
know, multi-specialty nature
that is laboratory medicine and pathology.
And we've been fortunate to have you
as a guest on this podcast a few times,
but I think this is the first time
we've broken out the phrase tick party.
- Tick party. Who wants a tick party?
(Dr. Kreuter laughs)
- So thank you so much, Dr. Pritt
for talking about this with us today,
rounding with us about the ticks
and helping us get our head around,
why it's gonna be a severe tick summer,
what this means for us in the laboratory.
- Well, thanks Dr. Kreuter,
I appreciate the opportunity
to talk ticks anytime.
- To all of our listeners,
thank you for joining us today.
We invite you to share
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Please direct any suggestions
to mcleducation@mayo.edu
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