CDC: Lyme Disease on the Move in 17 States

The geographic areas where Lyme disease is a bigger danger have grown dramatically, according to a new government study published Wednesday.

 

U.S. cases remain concentrated in the Northeast and upper Midwest. But now more areas in those regions are considered high risk.

 

There are now 260 counties where the risk of catching Lyme disease is at least twice the national average, up from 130 a decade earlier, the report shows.

 

Overall, 17 states have high-risk counties. The entire state of Connecticut, where the illness was first identified in 1975, has been high-risk for decades. Now, high-risk zones encompass nearly all of Massachusetts and New Hampshire and more than half of Maine and Vermont.

 

Other states that saw expansion of high-risk areas include Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York along the Eastern seaboard, and Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota in the Midwest.

 

The CDC says 14 states accounted for 95 percent of all confirmed cases in the U.S. in 2013.

 

The report was published online in a CDC journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases.