(Topix) Health officials are concerned about a jump in reported cases of Lyme disease in Maryland.
The number of reported cases more than doubled last year to nearly 2,600 statewide. In Howard County, the number more than tripled to 358.
Howard County health officer Dr. Peter Beilenson believes the increase could be due, in part, to better awareness of the disease.
However, he says experts believe many cases go unreported. Health officials say spring is the start of the active season for ticks. To prevent tick bites, citizens are advised to use insect repellent, check their skin and keep their grass and bushes trimmed. Read more


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(From Topix Health)

Things like that may be an effect of climate change. In general, the colder it is, the fewer vector borne diseases there are. This is one of the main reasons the northerly and southerly countries have done better economically historically than the equatorial countries, because the hotter countries have huge rates of chronic diseases, parasites, etc. Its not just because of the lack of clean water, they also have diseases like malaria that are spread by animals or fungi. (like Lyme)

Species can only migrate so fast, and sometimes, climate change happens rapidly, so rapidly that it takes a few years for the insects and vector borne diseases to catch up. Warming of climate can lead to big changes in the number and kinds of bugs. For example, as I understand it many areas in the far north were depopulated of soil worms in the last Ice Age because of the ice that covered much of North America to a depth of a mile or more. Worms travel very slowly, so they have yet to re-populate some formerly glaciated areas that had worms before the last ice age ended.. (~10,000-8,000 years ago) But they ARE moving north.

Also, in periods of *very extreme* climate change, (transitions between geological epochs) the amount of fungi biomass has been shown to dramatically increase as the number of non-fungal biomass decreases. (fungal spike) along with species extinctions.