Powassan virus: Experts raise alarm over rare tick-borne infection dubbed 'Lyme disease's deadly cousin'
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT: Experts are raising alarm over a rare tick-borne disease in the US that kills up to one in 10 sufferers and leaves the other half with life-long disabilities or brain damage. A study by the Yale School of Public Health found that the Powassan virus, dubbed as "Lyme disease's deadly cousin", is rarely diagnosed and spreads by black-legged ticks which appear on deer. The tick is also responsible for giving humans Lyme disease, hence deemed as its cousin.
Powassan virus can be transferred just 15 minutes after the tick latches on, with a majority of people who contract the virus being asymptomatic. It is being detected in clusters in Connecticut, New York State, and Maine. As of now, there are currently no vaccines or antivirals for the disease, which can be fatal.
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What is Powassan virus?
The Powassan virus is named after the place where its first victim was found, a five-year-old boy in Powassan, Ontario. He developed severe encephalitis and died in 1958. The primary spreader of Powassan is Ixodes scapularis, also known as the black-legged tick or deer tick as it appears on deer. The hard-bodied black-legged tick is also a carrier for Lyme disease, and generally, the cases rise when ticks are most active in late spring, early summer, and mid-fall, reported Daily Mail.
People, who spent most time outdoors, are more prone to a higher risk of infection. The squirrel tick and groundhog tick also share traits of the Powassan virus, but these ticks do not usually bite humans. Unlike Lyme disease, which takes hours to transfer from an infected tick to a human, Powassan is reported to spread in just 15 minutes after the tick latches.
Doug Brackney, a researcher in the Department of Entomology at The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, and an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at YSPH, said, "If it's anything like [the related] tick-borne encephalitis virus, [previous researchers have] estimated that these foci are typically about the size of a football field," according to the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
What are the Powassan virus' symptoms?
In the US, Powassan disease has mainly been found in the eastern, northern Midwest, the Great Lakes region as well as in southeastern Canada and Russia and especially in the wooden areas. Once the tick laches on, the condition often progresses to meningoencephalitis, causing inflammation of the brain and tissues which leads to an altered mental status, seizures, partial paralysis, and the loss of the ability to communicate. The symptoms usually appear within one to four weeks period after being bitten by the tick, with the initial signs including fever, headache, vomiting, and general weakness.
Currently, there are no vaccines or medicines to cure the disease which is why treatments are focused on easing symptoms, including trouble breathing and swelling of the brain. Chantal Vogels, a research scientist in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at YSPH and a co-author of the study, said, "We typically only see the most severe cases of disease, and those are the people that end up in the hospital. But it's probably just the tip of the iceberg," reported the source.
In November 2022, Cali Neri, a two-year-old from the Dannemora area, was diagnosed with Powassan virus and was unable to speak or move much of her body and was receiving treatment at Boston Children's Hospital. After finally being discharged in late March, the toddler was readmitted to the hospital on April 11.