Arizona researchers and health experts have been working to track a rare disease in the state, and they have a request: “Send us your ticks.”
In the summer of 2003, a 14-month-old boy was taken to a community health clinic with a rash and fever. After new complications, a hospital transfer and multiple days of treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs and antibiotics, he died on the sixth day from pulmonary hemorrhage without doctors knowing the culprit.
Days later, they found in his blood serum the DNA remnants of a rare bacterium that is transmitted through tick bites. It was the first official case of Rocky Mountain spotted fever in the state, the most severe tick-borne illness in the country. The disease was not unknown to scientists, but the vector was. Arizona became the first place where scientists confirmed that a common species of tick, called “brown dog tick,” could carry the bacteria…