Free Lyme Disease event May 16

#Middlebury #LymeDisease #Ticks

This picture shows the sizes of the Black-legged Tick during three of its four life stages. The dime gives you an idea of how tiny a tick can be. (CDC.gov photo)

By MARJORIE NEEDHAM

The 13th Annual Lyme Connection Patient Conference and Health Fair will be held Thursday, May 16, at Western Connecticut State University’s Westside Campus Student Center at 43 Lake Ave. Extension in Danbury. Doors to the health fair will open at 5 p.m., and the evening program will begin at 7 p.m.

With tick activity increasing as the weather warms up, this free event offers area residents the opportunity to learn about tick-control products, Lyme-literate practitioners, testing laboratories and a wide range of manufacturers offering prevention and patient support services. The program will start with an award to a doctor who has treated patients with tick-borne illnesses for three decades and continue with talks by two experts on the disease.

The Centers for Disease Control website (www.cdc.gov) says it receives reports of 30,000 cases of Lyme disease each year, but it also says two studies revealed the annual number of Lyme disease cases is really 10 times as much, or 300,000 cases. Ninety-six percent of those cases are concentrated in 14 states in the Northeast and upper Midwest.

Jennifer Reid, a Lyme Connection educator, said, “Right now, in springtime, people need to rethink their prevention behaviors. This conference is the only one in Connecticut that is available to patients and is free … We’ve always been committed to providing this information for free because we didn’t want anyone in our state to not be able to afford to come in and learn. It’s a patient-friendly event.”

Maggie (Shaw) Schaefer, an R.N. who volunteers with Lyme Connection, said, “This event is doing a huge service to the people of Connecticut who aren’t being given the information they need.”

Reid and Schaefer have personally dealt with Lyme Disease in their families, and that motivated them to learn more about the disease and help educate others. Schaefer said testing is only about 50 percent accurate. In her case, she went undiagnosed for six years because her two tests came back negative. It wasn’t until she went to a doctor who specializes in diagnosing the disease that she was properly diagnosed. In her family of five, all of whom contracted the disease, only one had a clearly positive Lyme Disease test.
Schaefer said clinical diagnosis is more important than test results when diagnosing Lyme Disease. And she said people suffering from other tick-borne illnesses such as anaplasmosis, babeosis or erlichiosis would test negative on a Lyme Disease test but would still need treatment.

Reid said you can get more than one disease from a single tick bite. The CDC site says the Black-legged Tick that carries Lyme Disease also can carry four other tick-borne illnesses.

Both women encourage all to attend the Lyme Connection event. An award presentation to start the evening program will be followed by two speakers. The Lyme Connection’s second “Courage in Patient Care Award” will be present to Dr. Kenneth Liegner of Pawling, N.Y. Dr. Liegner is a board-certified internist with training in pathology and critical care medicine and an International Lyme and Associated Diseases (ILADS) member. His book, “In the Crucible of Chronic Lyme Disease,” provides a detailed account of his 30-plus years diagnosing and caring for patients suffering from Lyme disease and related disorders.

The two speakers will be Pat Smith and Dr. Robert Bransfield. Smith is in her 19th year as president of the all-volunteer national nonprofit Lyme Disease Association and is a member of the Health and Human Services Tick-Borne Disease Working Group. Dr. Bransfield is a clinical associate professor at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, past president of ILADS, and past president of the New Jersey Psychiatric Association. A question-and-answer session will conclude the evening.

These vials of preserved larval and nymph Black-legged Ticks show the size of the ticks in these two life stages. (Maggie Schaefer photo)

It’s not too early to start educating ourselves. When we asked Schaefer why it was that most cases of Lyme Disease were confirmed in June, July and August, she replied that we start in spring with adult ticks that are large enough to see. By June, July and August, their larval and nymph offspring are crawling on us, and they are so tiny they are hard to spot. A look at the accompanying photo with vials containing larval and nymph Black-legged Ticks will give you a better idea of what you need to be looking for.

For those of us heading out to do spring cleanups in our yards, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station’s Tick Management Handbook offers landscaping techniques that can help reduce Black-legged Tick populations:

• Remove leaf litter.
• Clear tall grasses and brush around homes and at the edge of lawns.
• Place a 3-ft wide barrier of wood chips or gravel between lawns and wooded areas to restrict tick migration into recreational areas.
• Mow the lawn frequently.
• Stack wood neatly and in a dry area (discourages rodents).
• Keep playground equipment, decks, and patios away from yard edges and trees.
• Discourage unwelcome animals (such as deer, raccoons, and stray dogs) from entering your yard by constructing fences.
• Remove old furniture, mattresses, or trash from the yard as they may give ticks a place to hide.