New Tick-Borne Disease Identified in Connecticut

Researchers have found a new disease, similar to Lyme (which rather unfortunately put the tiny town of Lyme on the map) and also carried by deer ticks, in Connecticut and New York.

The illness, which has many of the same symptoms of Lyme Disease — fever, headache, muscle ache and fatigue — can also be treated with the same class of drugs as Lyme, according to a report in the New Haven Register.

Researchers at the Yale schools of Public Health and Medicine discovered the disease, which was first found in deer ticks in Japan in 1995 and then in Connecticut in 2001. The experts estimate, conservatively, that there are probably 4,000 cases of the illness in this country so far, but that number could be much higher, the report states.