Ever been bitten by a tick? A scientist wants to know

When it's freezing cold and snowy outside, ticks might not spring to mind, but a team at Mount Allison University wants to get people thinking about the time they were bitten by one.

Research is underway at Mount Allison University to try to assess how well preventive Lyme disease measures work after a bite.

Biology professor Vett Lloyd says the traditional way of dealing with tick bites has been to "wait and see" if people show signs of getting ill, and then to start them on antibiotics for 10 to 21 days if symptoms appear.

But the numbers of blacklegged ticks, the main transmitters of the Lyme disease bacteria, are growing, she said.

"So in the past few years, there's been a switch to essentially assuming the worst, assuming that people may have been infected and giving them a preventive dose of antibiotics before they get ill," Lloyd said.

"The missing piece in there is how well that's working."

Lloyd said the treatment after a tick bite is now usually shorter with a preventative dose, and her team wants to figure out if this approach is actually working at stopping long-term effects.

The longer a tick is attached to someone, the greater the risk of transmission of the bacteria that causes Lyme. 

According to a map on the New Brunswick government website, the northern parts of the province have a lower risk of Lyme disease, according to historical disease data and tick surveillance data, while the southwestern regions have higher risk.

Lloyd said the people who get ill after a tick bite are usually good at responding, but she said the team also wants to hear from people who were treated and ended up fine as well.

The survey is available on the Lloyd Tick Lab website, and Lloyd hopes the research will be available to the public by midsummer.

"As Canada has embarked on a big experiment for our benefit, there's no point doing an experiment if you don't check what happens," she said.

"It's a short survey … whether it was single dose, longer dose, whether it's hospital, pharmacy, we want to hear how people did with any kind of treatment for Lyme disease."