Tick bites carry the risk of transmitting serious illnesses, including Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and in rare cases Powassan virus. All of these are present in Massachusetts.
Finding a tick on yourself—or worse, your kid or pet—can be tremendously anxiety-inducing. You’ve probably heard about tick-borne illness and you naturally want to know what you're dealing with, what to watch for, and how concerned you should be.
First, it’s important to know that not every tick bite results in disease. The tick has to be carrying a pathogen in the first place. And, in most cases, it needs to be attached for a lengthy stretch of time before disease can be transmitted. Lyme disease, which is the most common tick-borne illness in the Northeast, usually takes 36–48 hours. That means if you remove the tick quickly, your odds of catching Lyme disease go down massively.
That’s not to say that Lyme disease is the sole concern around here. The very same blacklegged ticks common to Massachusetts can also lead to anaplasmosis, a bacterial infection that leads to fever, headache, muscle pain, and in severe cases, organ complications, as well as babesiosis, which can be dangerous for older adults or people with weakened immune systems. You can even get multiple infections at the same time, which is called co-infection.
Powassan virus is rarer but more alarming because it can transmit within hours of attachment. Thankfully, this is rare, but it is something that needs to be monitored for because it can cause serious neurological complications. If you have a fever, headache, vomiting, and weakness after a tick bite, that’s a sign to go to the doctor, if for no other reason than to rule out Powassan.
Early recognition and treatment of tick-borne illnesses is highly effective. Antibiotics resolve most Lyme and anaplasmosis cases when caught early. But prevention, meaning taking steps to reduce your exposure to ticks in the first place remains the strongest strategy.
If you want help protecting yourself and your family from tick-borne illness, Mosquito Squad of Worcester can help. This can be done through tick control treatments that target the yard areas where ticks wait for hosts. This helps reduce the tick population by up to 90% in your yard, and in doing so, reduces the odds of encounters that put your family at risk.
