tick bite

Blacklegged ticks, also called deer ticks, are not insects, but rather arachnids. They can carry more than a dozen rare diseases, including Lyme disease.

NPR Health

Sun's out, ticks out. Lyme disease-carrying bloodsucker season is getting longer

Vanessa Romo

Blacklegged ticks, the arachnids that carry Lyme disease, are out and about. Here's how to stay safe.

White-footed mice are efficient transmitters of Lyme disease in the Northeast. They infect up to 95 percent of the ticks that feed on them. But it's people who create the conditions for Lyme outbreaks by building homes in the animals' habitat.

NPR Health

Forbidding Forecast For Lyme Disease In The Northeast

Michaeleen Doucleff

Lyme disease is spreading, and this summer is shaping up as a whopper. Why has the tick-borne illness gotten so bad? The answer traces back to something the colonists did more than 200 years ago.

HNF Stories

Scientists Discover A Second Bacterium That Causes Lyme Disease

Rae Ellen Bichell

It's not the tick that causes Lyme disease, but the bacteria that live in its spit. Scientists at the Mayo Clinic have found a second bacterium capable of causing the disease in people.