The Tick Project in Focus

Results unveiled from Dutchess County study

For the past six years, 24 neighborhoods in Dutchess County have been part of a study to determine whether ticks can be managed in residential areas in order to reduce the incidence of tick-borne diseases. 

The study – conducted in partnership with Bard College, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, New York State Department of Health, and Dutchess County Department of Behavioral and Community Health – used two environmentally-safe interventions, Met52 fungal spray and Tick Control System (TCS) bait boxes in the participating neighborhoods, each consisting of 6-10 square blocks and roughly 100 properties. In addition to researchers monitoring ticks on the participating properties, homeowners completed bi-weekly surveys about their encounters.

The results: “We found that the TCS bait boxes reduced the number of ticks in people’s yards by about half. We did not see a reduction in tick numbers from the Met52 fungal spray.”

Most importantly, researchers added, the incidence of tick-borne diseases in humans was not affected by either the TCS boxes or the Met52 spray, but the study found that the “incidence of tick-borne diseases in pets was lower by about half on properties that were treated with either the boxes, the spray, or both.”

Ultimately, the study found that “reducing the incidence of tick-borne diseases in people might be quite difficult to achieve by managing ticks in neighborhoods or individual yards. We suspect that the best strategy going forward will be to develop vaccinations against the diseases, or against the ticks themselves.”

Watch a replay of last week’s presentation, here: https://www.caryinstitute.org/news-insights/lecture-video/tick-project-focus 

Read the project’s full paper here: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/28/5/21-1146_article 

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