Staying safe outdoors: How understanding tick biology can help you avoid Lyme disease

If you spend time outdoors, you are at risk for Lyme disease, a tick-borne bacterial infection that affects almost half a million people each year and can become serious if not treated early. Lyme disease is one of several illnesses you can contract from a black-legged tick bite. Due to environmental changes, the geographic range of black-legged ticks has spread far beyond New England. And as a result of warmer winters, ticks pose a threat through the entire year.

Isobel Ronai, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University who studies ticks and tick-borne diseases. Drawing on her research, Dr. Ronai describes the biological characteristics that make ticks a particularly daunting threat and explains how we can use what we know about tick biology to protect ourselves against ticks and the diseases they cause. Dr. Ronai also addresses important knowledge gaps in tick research and explains how filling those gaps may help us gain more ground against ticks.

The Lyme Wellness Initiative is a donor-funded resource developed by Harvard Health Publishing at Harvard Medical School. The purpose of our work is to raise awareness of Lyme disease among the general public and to help those with Lyme disease improve their quality of life.