Life Sciences Commons^™

Management Of Ticks And Tick-Borne Disease In A Tennessee Retirement Community, Jessica Rose Harmon

Masters Theses

Human Monocytic Ehrlichiosis (HME) is an emerging disease first described in 1987 and is transmitted by the bite of Amblyomma americanum. Over the past 10 years, the CDC has documented increasing ehrlichiosis case reports nationwide. Our study site is a golf-oriented retirement community located in the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee. In 1993, four men at the study site had symptoms consistent with HME which prompted a CDC outbreak investigation and led community managers to mitigate ticks feeding on deer. The objectives of this study were to measure the efficacy of current tick mitigation attempts, to determine the level of …