Health Wanted: Tick Talk

May 16, 2025
pink background with orange writing and a tick on a leaf

HEALTH WANTED, a weekly radio show and podcast produced in partnership with WABE, brings need-to-know public health headlines and breaks down the science behind trending topics.

The Episode

The topic: The return of summer brings fresh air, time outside, and a rising chance of running into ticks. This week on Health Wanted, host Laurel Bristow and guest Brandon Jutras, PhD, explore the science behind Lyme disease and the latest research on its prevention and treatment.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW

The takeaway: Lyme disease is a bacterial infection transmitted through the bite of infected black-legged ticks that can cause many serious symptoms. While outside this summer, make sure to take proper precautions to avoid tick bites.

  • Ticks are responsible for a range of diseases, including Colorado tick fever; anaplasmosis; Rocky Mountain spotted fever; alpha-gal; babesiosis; and more. Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease and is the number one vector-transmitted disease in the United States.
  • A key sign of Lyme disease is a rash that typically appears around the bite site within a week of infection, but not everyone develops it. Symptoms of Lyme disease can vary widely, and about 15% of individuals continue to experience them even after treatment. However, most people recover within two to four weeks with antibiotic therapy.
  • Although vaccine development and clinical trials for new Lyme disease treatments are ongoing, preventing tick bites is currently the most effective way to avoid infection. Wearing long pants and sleeves, applying bug repellents with DEET or picaridin, tucking pants into socks, and staying away from dense underbrush are all effective preventive measures.
  • Always perform a tick check after spending time outdoors. If you find one, remove it with tweezers by grabbing it close to the head and pulling it straight up to avoid leaving mouthparts embedded in your skin. Ticks need time to transmit Lyme disease, so quick removal reduces the risk of infection.

The Interview

The guest: Brandon Jutras, PhD

The key takeaways: 

  • The bacterium responsible for Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi, has a unique structure. It is spiral-shaped and much longer compared to other bacteria, making it more difficult to categorize and study using traditional methods.
  • It is unclear why some people still have symptoms of Lyme disease after antibiotic treatment. One theory is that parts of the bacteria’s cell wall remain in the body after the infection is cleared. These fragments can continue to trigger immune responses, leading to ongoing symptoms.
  • A common long-term complication of Lyme disease is arthritis. The bacteria tend to concentrate in the joints, especially the knees. There, they can cause pain and inflammation.
  • While doxycycline is the most common Lyme disease treatment, researchers are investigating whether repurposing older antibiotics could offer better results. Unfortunately, testing these antibiotics is challenging due to the high costs of growing Borreliaburgdorferi and the difficulty of working with it in laboratory settings.

 

The Listener Questions 

The United States Department of Health and Human Services announced they want all future vaccine studies to be tested against placebos instead of other vaccines. Why are people upset about it?


People are upset about this for a few reasons.

First, it paints a picture that we don’t currently use placebo-controlled trials - but we do, for all new vaccines.

For example, COVID-19 vaccines were tested against a placebo. Sometimes new vaccines are tested against a vaccine for a different pathogen, like meningitis. That way, even people who are in the control arm still have vaccine reactions like sore arms or a mild fever, and they don’t know if they are in the intervention or control arm.

But even things like the MMR, rotavirus, and chickenpox vaccines all have placebo-controlled trials.

We don’t use placebo-controlled trials when we update existing vaccines or test a vaccine for a disease that already has a safe and effective vaccine. In those cases, it would be extremely unethical to give someone a placebo.

Take measles for example: Vaccination rates have been dropping, and cases are rising.

Let’s say someone invents a measles vaccine that has fewer side effects or uses fewer antigens. In testing the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, it would be unethical to give half the kids in the trial no vaccine at all when we have a safe and effective vaccine. You’d be risking them getting measles, which can be deadly or debilitating.

It would also be harder to know if the protection from the new vaccine is the same, better, or worse than what we already have. And as with any clinical trial, you’re still not going to catch extremely rare safety issues, things that happen in one out of every 80,000 doses, in a trial that has 10 or 20 thousand people. Which is why we still do post-marketing safety surveillance. We still track vaccine safety after it’s available to try and catch those serious but rare outcomes.


The U.S. is banning synthetic food dyes. How have these been allowed for so long when they are banned in other countries?

There are a couple of misconceptions to clarify about synthetic food dyes.

Food manufacturers have agreed to stop using eight colors of petroleum-based dyes (blue no. 1, blue no. 2, green no.3, red no. 40, yellow no.5, yellow no. 6, orange B, and citrus red 2) by 2026.

Orange B is approved for use in sausage casing and citrus red is sometimes used to color orange peels, so they aren’t commonly eaten products.

But as of right now, there’s no ban, legislation, or punishment if they do not stop using them.

Also, these dyes are not banned in the EU - not even the infamous red 40. Some of them are banned in Norway, Finland, and different countries, but it’s not like the U.S. is the sole holdout when it comes to using these additives.

The bigger issue is that it’s performative to ban dyes when we could be doing actual, tangible things to get people better access to healthy, whole foods.

The evidence that these additives cause any real issues is extremely slim. The real issues are things like lack of access to fiber and whole foods and a sedentary lifestyle.

There is too much reliance on high-carb, high-fat, low-nutrition foods. They often use these dyes, but they will still be high-carb, high-fat, and low-nutrition even with natural dyes. 

We’re spending time and making a big show of banning these dyes when it’s unlikely to solve any chronic health issues.



Catch all the listener questions and Laurel’s answers on the full episode of Health Wanted by:

Associated Topics:

    Donate to the Public health Preparedness and Research Fund