Kirby Stafford, Connecticut’s state entomologist, knows only one surefire way to reduce tick populations enough to cut Lyme disease rates: killing deer. Otherwise, he says, “very little by itself really reduces tick numbers enough.”
But in some Connecticut neighborhoods Stafford has been testing a new strategy, one he hopes might show real promise after years of stymied efforts to drive new Lyme infections down: a vaccine for mice.
Roughly half of ticks carrying Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that cause Lyme disease, pick it up by biting infected white-footed mice. That makes these fist-size fuzz balls the most important carriers of the bacteria and a prime target for a Lyme vaccine, Stafford says. In theory, vaccinating enough mice should lower the number of ticks that acquire Borrelia in the first place. And fewer infected ticks means fewer infected bites on humans.