How Long has Lyme Disease Been Around?

By Iain MacLeod on Friday, October 4, 2002.

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Though it was only discovered in the 1970's, there is evidence that Lyme Disease was around long before then.

I'm Iain MacLeod from the Audubon Society of New Hampshire, and this is Something Wild.

Several months back, Something Wild discussed the theory that the increasing incidence of Lyme Disease might have something to do with the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon in the late 1800s.

A listener emailed us and suggested that that theory was off-base, as Lyme Disease was only discovered in the 1970s.

Although Lyme Disease isn't as much of a problem in New Hampshire as in, say, Connecticut, it's a fascinating story that involves humans, wildlife, and ticks.

Actually, Lyme Disease is not new. Ticks collected on Long Island in the 1940's were found to carry the Lyme bacteria, and physicians back then described cases that probably were Lyme disease.

So it's been around at least since the 1940s. But why do so many people seem to get it now?

It's partially because people recognize and report it more. But it's more complicated than that. First of all, the deer tick population rises and falls with the deer population. In the early 20th century, deer were almost extinct in southern New England. So deer ticks and, consequently, Lyme Disease, were pretty scarce, also. As deer were protected by new laws, and farms reverted to forest, their population rebounded. And so did the tick population.

Human behavior is a factor, also. Over the last 100 years, more and more people have left the cities for suburbs, to live closer to nature. As more people have had more contact with tick habitat, more people get bitten and infected.

As is always the case with one of these convoluted co-evolution stories, it is amazing to see how changes in one population can affect so many other species. Including us!

Something Wild is a joint production of the Audubon Society of New Hampshire, New Hampshire Public Radio, and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. For Something Wild, I'm Iain MacLeod.

If you have a natural history question that you would like answered on Something Wild, email us at somethingwild@ nhpr.org.