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Global warming can lead to spread of tick-borne disease.


Byline: ANI

Washington, Dec 31 (ANI): Global warming global warming, the gradual increase of the temperature of the earth's lower atmosphere as a result of the increase in greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution.  might lead to the spread of tick borne diseases in humans, warns a professor at the University of Marseille Marseille
 or Marseilles

City (pop., 1999: city, 797,486; metro. area, 1,349,772), southeastern France. One of the Mediterranean's major seaports and the second largest city in France, it is located on the Gulf of Lion, west of the French Riviera.
 School of Medicine in France.

Didier Raoult, a professor at the University of Marseille School of Medicine in France suggests that as global climate warms, dog ticks might be more likely to bite people, and tick-transmitted diseases might become more common.

In the spring of 2007, three men in France became seriously ill A patient is seriously ill when his or her illness is of such severity that there is cause for immediate concern but there is no imminent danger to life. See also very seriously ill.  after sustaining bites from disease-infected dog ticks. The bites occurred after the hottest April since 1950.

A 2004 outbreak of Rocky Mountain spotted fever Rocky Mountain spotted fever, infectious disease caused by a rickettsia. The germ is harbored by wild rodents and other animals and is carried by infected ticks that attach themselves to humans.  in Arizona was also associated with dog ticks. During the extremely hot summer of 2003, a man died after 20 brown dog ticks brown dog tick

see rhipicephalussanguineus.
 bit him at once

These cases prompted the researchers to investigate if hot weather made dog ticks turn on humans.

For the study, Raoult and his two of his colleagues incubated 500 brown dog ticks at 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 C) and 500 at 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 C). Then, they placed the ticks on their own arms.

"They take a very long time to attach. It's not like a mosquito. They don't have time to bite you," Discovery News quoted him, as saying.

After an hour, the researchers found that almost 50 pct of the ticks incubated at 104 degrees tried to burrow in, while none of those incubated at 77 degrees did.

Raoult believes that thirst compels the ticks to seek human blood at higher temperatures.

However, Christopher Paddock paddock

a fenced field or enclosure.


joining paddock
used for mating.
, a pathologist with the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said that the temperature is just one factor that affects tick behaviour.

Moreover, a sudden surge from 77 degrees to 104 degrees is too extreme to mimic a realistic global warming scenario, he added. (ANI)

Copyright [c] 2008 Asian News International The Asian News International (ANI) agency provides multimedia news to China and 50 bureaus in India. It covers virtually all of South Asia since its foundation and presently claims, on its official website, to be the leading South Asia-wide news agency.  (ANI) - All Rights Reserved.

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Publication:Asian News International
Date:Dec 31, 2008
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