Vermont’s Lyme disease rate was the highest in the nation in 2017, with 174 new cases diagnosed per 100,000 people.
Though other states had more cases than Vermont’s 1,089, Vermont’s total is highest when adjusted for population. Maine ranked second, with 139 cases per 100,000.
Nationally, 2017 was the worst year in the past decade for Lyme disease, with 42,321 diagnosed cases — nearly 5,000 more than the previous high in 2015.
Though national data aren’t yet available for 2018, the Vermont Health Department finalized its 2018 numbers to send to the CDC last month. The department counted 576 cases in the state, slightly more than half the 2017 number.
That doesn’t mean you should stop checking for ticks, though. Patti Casey, the environmental surveillance program director at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, said that though tick populations declined last year, they increased considerably this spring. Her program conducts tick field monitoring for the Department of Health. Sampling this spring turned up 55 percent more blacklegged and dog ticks than the previous year. (Blacklegged ticks, aka deer ticks, carry Lyme disease; dog ticks don’t.)
Ticks rely on hosts like rodents and deer, so cycles in those animals’ populations can impact tick numbers. And weather can take a toll, too: Sustained cold temperatures without snow for insulation can kill off ticks, as can long periods of hot, dry summer weather.
And climate change brings warm weather earlier in the spring and later in the fall, giving ticks a longer season to find hosts, feed and find shelter before the winter.
“It’s giving invasive pests a longer season to feed,” said Casey.
Tick migration, animal population cycles and weather fluctuation make it hard to predict what years will be worse for incidence of Lyme disease.
“It’s nearly impossible to predict what’s going to happen,” said Casey. “This is all really new to our area.”
Indeed, Vermont hasn’t always led the pack on Lyme disease rates. In 2008, the CDC changed its monitoring definition of Lyme disease to include probable cases rather than just confirmed. That year, the Green Mountain State ranked fourth in the nation, behind New Hampshire, Delaware and Maine. By 2017, Vermont and Maine led the pack, followed by Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
Lyme Rates in the Five Highest-Incidence U.S. States
Rate of new cases annually per 100,000 people
Vermont
Maine
Rhode
Island
New
Hampshire
Pennsylvania
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
2008
2017
2008
2017
2008
2017
2008
2017
2008
2017
Vermont
Maine
120
40
2008
2017
2008
2017
Rhode Island
New Hampshire
120
40
2008
2017
2008
2017
Pennsylvania
120
40
2008
2017
Chart: Andrea Suozzo • Source: Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Census Bureau
From state to state, health departments may conduct disease surveillance differently. Increases in Lyme disease rates may indicate changes in levels of awareness about the disease.
To further complicate matters, Massachusetts uses a different case definition in its reporting than the CDC’s, resulting in numbers far lower than those in neighboring New England states.
Still, the numbers show the disease has migrated a long way from southern Connecticut, where it was first discovered.
Lyme disease rates fluctuate by year. Since states began reporting cases to the Centers for Disease Control in 1991, however, deer tick populations and the diseases they carry have spread steadily outward from southern New England.
A 2015 analysis in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases found that “geographic expansion of high-risk areas is ongoing,” and that the disease isn’t just moving south or north — it’s migrating in all directions.
In Vermont, Lyme disease has slowly migrated north over the past decade, with rates in northern counties trending steadily upward.
Bennington County has led the state each and every year, however, hitting a rate of 473 cases per 100,000 in 2011. (To be clear, that reflects just 174 actual cases. Bennington County has fewer than 40,000 people; the rate has been adjusted to the per-100,000 population, since that’s standard in disease monitoring).
Though it’s still not as prevalent as Lyme disease, anaplasmosis is of particular concern to older Vermonters. It often manifests with flulike symptoms — fever, chills and headaches.
Never want to go outside again?
Kwit said as long as you’re taking precautions, there’s no reason not to go for that hike.
“Tick-borne diseases are treatable and preventable,” she said.
Kwit advises people to wear EPA-registered insect repellent, be aware of common tick habitats, and to shower and do thorough tick checks soon after spending time outdoors. Read up on removing ticks properly, and be on the lookout for common symptoms of tick-borne diseases.
If you do find a tick attached to your body, you can help the state monitor tick populations by sending the insect itself or a close-up photo to the Agency of Agriculture’s Passive Tick Surveillance Program. That way you can learn if it’s a deer tick.
And above all, if you experience symptoms of Lyme disease or anaplasmosis, get medical attention.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
I submitted a tick with the Labs form to the Dept of Ags lab in late May and have not yet received a reply.
A few other tips:
–If you have a tick bite, send the tick to tickreport.com and for $50 within a few days you will get results telling you if the tick is carrying Lyme disease. Pay more for more tests. And look at their data for various states to see what the tick diseases in New England states are carrying.
–treat clothing with permethrin or send your own clothing to insectshield.com for treatment. A treated lightweight white hoodie is a very effective first level of protection, along with always tucking pant legs into socks.
–treat cotton balls with permethrin, put the treated cotton balls ins toilet paper or paper towel tubes, scatter them around the perimeter of the areas you use outdoors, or buy treated cotton balls in tubes from ticktubes.com.
These tips and more are thanks to Dr. Alexis Chesney who wrote this very useful e-book about how to prevent tick bites
https://www.amazon.com/Living-Tick-Free-Pr…
As a physician in Tennessee, we are seeing more Lyme infections even though we still have patients report that other doctors tell them that Lyme does not exist in Tennessee. I am not sure what other doctors are thinking, but between CDC stats estimating 300,000 cases and western blots with 8 bands, I know Lyme is alive and kicking. As the earlier commenter mentioned, tickreports.com is a good way to test ticks you pull off yourself. Already pulled two off one of my kids this year.
Until more doctors wake up, I keep treating their patients and seeing patients recover from Lyme and other tick infections.
Dr. Eric Potter, Sanctuary Functional Medicine
As The previous head of U Vt. infectious disease dept. mocked Chronic Lyme Disease in the past. Do Not trust their blood tests ! Medical system Creating another epidemic .
Thank you Andrea for that thorough update! As you mentioned, tick borne diseases are treatable, and our physical therapy practice is happy to have helped 50+ Vermonters who are living well even after their infections.
If you or a loved one needs help with recovery from Lyme disease, we can help you too! http://www.wayfindervt.com
Thanks for the thorough update Andrea. Its our new normal, but we can all live well and stay safe out there.
And for anyone who has Lyme, there is hope. We help many Vermonter at our Physical Therapy clinic thrive even with the disease. If you know someone who needs help, please send them our way! http://www.wayfindervt.com
For some reason, perhaps the real old fashioned winter we had, with a late spring, I haven’t found any deer ticks (black legged) on my body yet this year. And just a couple of dog ticks. Last year dog ticks were frequent in the early summer and a couple of deer ticks, but don’t remember which month’s.
This year I’ve seen a few ticks on my cat. They bloated to about the size of a kernel of popcorn.
THERE ARE 2 REPELLENTS THAT WORK AS WELL AS DEET
Oil of lemon eucalyptus, NOT to be consuded with lemon eucalyptus oil!! OLE is an extract containing the active ingredients. It does work for 8 hours, won’t melt plastic or skin.
Picaridin is the other. It’s a bit greasy, but lasts for 12 hrs. Both are accepted by CDC.
Permethrin kills and repels, but is only for clothing – not skin application.
There are Youtube videos on how to treat clothes for cheap, that I have done. Supposed to last for a season with washings. Fingers crossed.
I pulled a tick off me on a Sunday, (PCP was closed of course) went to Fanny Allen who would not treat me with prophylactic antibiotics because according to their guidelines I couldn’t prove the tick had been attached 12 hours. Also, the true Lyme doctors recommend two weeks of antibiotics, and the last time I got a tick attached my doc gave me two tablets. Educate yourself concerning testing and treatment. And do all the prevention stuff too.
I doubled checked these figures with the CDC’s and am a bit confused… The numbers reported here are much higher than the “official” figures reported by the CDC – which is the listed source (?). According to the CDC, in 2017, Maine is #1 for the highest number of cases at 107 per 100,000 and Vermont is #2 at 104 cases per 100,000. https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/tables.html
These are the same figures that came to my inbox from Vermont Outcomes last month which did a similar data dive: https://vermontoutcomes.com/how-many-people-in-vermont-were-newly-diagnosed-with-lyme-disease/
Maybe you all can partner to limit duplication?
Hi Nathan – thanks for reading!
The numbers you’re looking at include only confirmed cases, not confirmed and probable. The county-level numbers the CDC provides are a combination of the two. The definition of Lyme disease has changed over the years, but as of 2008 states report the total case number as the combination of confirmed and probable. Since I didn’t want to use one set of numbers for county-level and a different set for state-level, I used the combined numbers in all cases for this analysis. I double-checked this approach with folks at both the Vermont Health Department and the CDC, since a lot of reporting I’ve seen uses both sets of numbers interchangeably, and they confirmed that reporting out the combined total, rather than just the confirmed category, is valid.
You can download the county-level dataset that I used for this analysis at the bottom of this page: https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/survfaq.htm…