美国国家公共电台 NPR Beyond Lyme: New Tick-Borne Diseases On The Rise In U.S.

 

LAKSHMI SINGH, HOST:

Ticks are known to carry Lyme disease. You probably already know that. But there are about a dozen other diseases carried by ticks that are cropping up and spreading across this country. It's part of a trend around the world. Over the past month, NPR has been reporting on why this is happening. NPR's Michaeleen Doucleff looks at the surge of new diseases caused by ticks and new ideas to stop them.

MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF, BYLINE¹: It all started in the shower. Tucker Lane had just spent the day outside. He's a plumber². He got undressed, looked down and there they were.

TUCKER LANE: Two ticks on my right hip³ directly next to each other.

DOUCLEFF: Tucker grew up on Cape⁴ Cod⁵. Ticks are everywhere in the summer, so he brushed it off.

LANE: I didn't really think much of it because I've been getting tick bites my whole life so no big deal.

DOUCLEFF: A few months later, that all changed. Tucker had just turned 21, and he got a pounding headache.

LANE: Two hours later, I was sweating, cold, had, like, tremors⁶ and the headache was even worse.

DOUCLEFF: He started projectile⁷ vomiting⁸, had a fever, double vision. Tucker's mom, Lynn Cash, was so worried, she rushed him to the hospital.

LYNN CASH: Immediately he got worse.

DOUCLEFF: Scans of Tucker's brain showed that it was swelling¹⁰, and he was losing consciousness. So they sent him to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

CASH: By the time they got him upstairs within another 48 hours, he was in a coma¹¹.

DOUCLEFF: And barely breathing.

CASH: He was on full life support. If you opened his eyelids¹², he was gone. I mean, I've never been so devastated¹³ in my whole life.

DOUCLEFF: The doctors knew something was attacking Tucker's brain, but they had no idea what it was. Lynn thought she knew where the problem was coming from.

CASH: I knew it was a tick thing. I knew it was a tick thing.

DOUCLEFF: Lynn's family has been on Cape Cod for many generations. She's seen a lot of Lyme disease, but nothing like this. This was something new, something frightening. And she was right. It was coming from the ticks. Across the country, this is happening more and more. People are catching¹⁴ new diseases from ticks. Felicia Keesing is an ecologist at Bard¹⁵ College. She says over the past 50 years, scientists have found at least 12 new ones, and old diseases are spreading.

FELICIA KEESING: There's a disease called anaplasmosis, babesiosis. There's Rocky Mountain spotted¹⁶ fever.

DOUCLEFF: And that's just in the Northeast. In the Midwest, there's Heartland virus and Bourbon virus, which can be deadly. Across the South, you've got ehrlichiosis. And out West, there's a new type of spotted fever.

KEESING: The more we look, the more we find.

DOUCLEFF: Most of these diseases are still rare, but there's one that really worries Keesing and her collaborator¹⁷, her husband Rick Ostfeld.

RICK OSTFELD: Our local ticks - this black-legged tick - occasionally and fairly rarely carry a deadly virus. It's called Powassan virus.

DOUCLEFF: Powassan - it's named after a town in Ontario, Canada, where it was discovered. Now the virus is here in the U.S. What makes Powassan so dangerous is it attacks the brain, makes it swell⁹ and can kill you, which brings us back to Tucker's case in Boston. Doctors didn't realize it at the time, but it was Powassan flooding his brain, had him fighting for his life.

JENNIFER LYONS: His MRI was particularly severe.

DOUCLEFF: That's Tucker's neurologist Jennifer Lyons. She thought the virus was causing irreversible damage. Tucker's mom, Lynn, says the doctors told her there really wasn't anything else they could do.

CASH: I did a lot of praying. I'll tell you that much.

DOUCLEFF: Then one morning after he had been in a coma for about a week, Lynn went to visit Tucker. She opened the door, and...

CASH: He turned his head.

DOUCLEFF: Looked at her and tried to speak.

CASH: The only thing that he - that came out of him was a (sighing) because he recognized me.

DOUCLEFF: That was the turning point. From then on, Tucker started to get better fast. He started to breathe on his own, to recognize people. In two weeks, he was out of the hospital. Tucker says he was never scared or worried because he was always surrounded by his family.

LANE: I woke up, and they were all there - my cousins. They were just joking with me and making me laugh and stuff like that. So it was all good.

DOUCLEFF: And it was all good. Tucker recovered. His doctors say it was remarkable¹⁸. It might be because he's so young and healthy. His body was better able to fight the infection, but not everyone is as lucky. Ostfeld says when you catch Powassan...

OSTFELD: You have about a 15 percent chance of dying, and if you survive, about a 50 percent chance of being permanently¹⁹ disabled.

DOUCLEFF: So is there a treatment or cure for Powassan?

OSTFELD: There is no treatment and no cure.

DOUCLEFF: So the best thing to do is to avoid getting it in the first place. And he and Keesing think they've come up with something that may help, a contraption that may reduce the cases of Powassan, Lyme and other diseases. To show me, Ostfeld takes me to the woods near his lab in the Hudson River Valley.

OSTFELD: So it's a mix of forest trees out here, but it's dominated by the oaks.

DOUCLEFF: The floor is covered in a thick layer of leaves, sometimes one, two-feet deep. Hidden underneath²⁰ the leaves are metal boxes.

OSTFELD: These are our traps.

DOUCLEFF: They're about the size of a wine bottle. Inside is Ostfeld's secret weapon.

OSTFELD: So I just reach into the bag. I can already feel that it's a pretty fat mouse.

DOUCLEFF: Aw. He's cute.

A little, white-footed mouse about the size of a dinner roll, dusty brown with a white belly²¹. Over the past 25 years, Ostfeld has been trapping and studying these animals, and he's figured out something key. They're covered in ticks.

OSTFELD: I'm going to inspect for ticks.

DOUCLEFF: I see you're using tweezers²² to try to find the tiny, little ticks on him.

OSTFELD: I'm moving her ears around so I can see very well to see if there are any ticks.

DOUCLEFF: Some mice have 50, 60, 100 ticks on their faces and ears. Most of these ticks are carrying Lyme. Some may be carrying other scary diseases. So Ostfeld had this idea - use the mice to kill the ticks, turn the mice into little assassins running around the forest. It's surprisingly simple to do. Remember those boxes Ostfeld used to trap the mice? What if you put a chemical inside that kills the ticks on the mice? Kind of like a mouse carwash...

OSTFELD: That delivers a tiny bit of tick-killing chemical.

DOUCLEFF: So this is just the same stuff that everyone puts on their - like just a couple drops on the back of your cat or your dog?

OSTFELD: Yes. But it's an even tinier, much tinier drop. So a little bit goes a long way.

DOUCLEFF: And it lasts a long time. So after the mouse leaves the box, it kills ticks that land on it for weeks. This spring, Ostfeld and Keesing have launched a massive experiment. They're putting these tick boxes around 1,200 homes in upstate New York. Then they'll check to see if the boxes keep people from getting sick. If it works, it'll be a first.

KEESING: Because so far, there have been no success stories of treating people's individual properties.

DOUCLEFF: Because here's the thing, it's not enough for just one or two families in a neighborhood to protect their yards. Keesing says the whole community has to come together to fight the onslaught of tick-borne diseases. Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR News.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 plumber   

n.(装修水管的)管子工

参考例句：

• Have you asked the plumber to come and look at the leaking pipe?你叫管道工来检查漏水的管子了吗？
• The plumber screwed up the tap by means of a spanner.管子工用板手把龙头旋紧。

3 hip   

n.臀部，髋；屋脊

参考例句：

• The thigh bone is connected to the hip bone.股骨连着髋骨。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line.新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

4 cape   

n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风

参考例句：

• I long for a trip to the Cape of Good Hope.我渴望到好望角去旅行。
• She was wearing a cape over her dress.她在外套上披着一件披肩。

5 cod   

n.鳕鱼；v.愚弄；哄骗

参考例句：

• They salt down cod for winter use.他们腌鳕鱼留着冬天吃。
• Cod are found in the North Atlantic and the North Sea.北大西洋和北海有鳕鱼。

6 tremors   

震颤( tremor的名词复数 )； 战栗； 震颤声； 大地的轻微震动

参考例句：

• The story was so terrible that It'sent tremors down my spine. 这故事太可怕，它使我不寒而栗。
• The story was so terrible that it sent tremors down my spine. 这故事太可怕，它使我不寒而栗。

7 projectile   

n.投射物，发射体；adj.向前开进的；推进的；抛掷的

参考例句：

• The vertical and horizontal motions of a projectile can be treated independently.抛射体的竖直方向和水平方向的运动能够分开来处理。
• Have you altered the plans of the projectile as the telegram suggests?你已经按照电报的要求修改炮弹图样了吗?

8 vomiting   

吐

参考例句：

• Symptoms include diarrhoea and vomiting. 症状有腹泻和呕吐。
• Especially when I feel seasick, I can't stand watching someone else vomiting." 尤其晕船的时候，看不得人家呕。”

9 swell   

vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强

参考例句：

• The waves had taken on a deep swell.海浪汹涌。
• His injured wrist began to swell.他那受伤的手腕开始肿了。

10 swelling   

n.肿胀

参考例句：

• Use ice to reduce the swelling. 用冰敷消肿。
• There is a marked swelling of the lymph nodes. 淋巴结处有明显的肿块。

11 coma   

n.昏迷，昏迷状态

参考例句：

• The patient rallied from the coma.病人从昏迷中苏醒过来。
• She went into a coma after swallowing a whole bottle of sleeping pills.她吃了一整瓶安眠药后就昏迷过去了。

12 eyelids   

n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色

参考例句：

• She was so tired, her eyelids were beginning to droop. 她太疲倦了，眼睑开始往下垂。
• Her eyelids drooped as if she were on the verge of sleep. 她眼睑低垂好像快要睡着的样子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

13 devastated   

v.彻底破坏( devastate的过去式和过去分词)；摧毁；毁灭；在感情上（精神上、财务上等）压垮adj.毁坏的；极为震惊的

参考例句：

• The bomb devastated much of the old part of the city. 这颗炸弹炸毁了旧城的一大片地方。
• His family is absolutely devastated. 他的一家感到极为震惊。

14 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

15 bard   

n.吟游诗人

参考例句：

• I'll use my bard song to help you concentrate!我会用我的吟游诗人歌曲帮你集中精神！
• I find him,the wandering grey bard.我发现了正在徘徊的衰老游唱诗人。

16 spotted   

adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的

参考例句：

• The milkman selected the spotted cows,from among a herd of two hundred.牛奶商从一群200头牛中选出有斑点的牛。
• Sam's shop stocks short spotted socks.山姆的商店屯积了有斑点的短袜。

17 collaborator   

n.合作者，协作者

参考例句：

• I need a collaborator to help me. 我需要个人跟我合作，帮我的忙。
• His collaborator, Hooke, was of a different opinion. 他的合作者霍克持有不同的看法。

18 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

19 permanently   

adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地

参考例句：

• The accident left him permanently scarred.那次事故给他留下了永久的伤疤。
• The ship is now permanently moored on the Thames in London.该船现在永久地停泊在伦敦泰晤士河边。

20 underneath   

adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面

参考例句：

• Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
• She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣，里面套着一条连衣裙。

21 belly   

n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛

参考例句：

• The boss has a large belly.老板大腹便便。
• His eyes are bigger than his belly.他眼馋肚饱。

22 tweezers   

n.镊子

参考例句：

• We simply removed from the cracked endocarp with sterile tweezers.我们简单地用消过毒的镊子从裂开的内果皮中取出种子。
• Bee stings should be removed with tweezers.蜜蜂的螫刺应该用小镊子拔出来。