Dill speaks to BDN about babesiosis

Griffin Dill, manager of the University of Maine Tick Lab, spoke to the Bangor Daily News about the rise of the tick-borne disease babesiosis. Cases of babesiosis — a disease carried and transmitted by deer ticks with symptoms that include fever, chills and lethargy — have skyrocketed in Maine from nine reported in 2011 to 138 in 2019, according to the U.S. CDC. The report comes as unseasonably warm weather in recent years has increased tick activity throughout the state, extending what has traditionally been. “We’ve had babesiosis cases [in Maine] since 2001, but they stayed relatively low at 5–10 cases a year until about 2013, when they really started to jump up to 30 or 40 cases a year. That seems like a relatively low number, but like Lyme disease, there is a good chance it is underreported,” Dill said.