This spring and summer may be a doozy for Lyme disease, at least in parts of the Northeast.
“We’re anticipating 2017 to be a particularly risky year for Lyme,” says Rick Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York.
Ostfeld has been studying the debilitating tick-borne disease for more than 20 years, and has developed an early warning system based on mice. For more on that, check out the piece in our sister blog, Goats and Soda.
He’s not exactly sure which parts of the Northeast will be most affected, but if recent history repeats itself, the risk will be high in New York state and Connecticut, he says, and possibly patches of the mid-Atlantic region.