Once called Nantucket fever, this nasty tick-borne illness is on the rise
ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
Nasty tick-borne illness is on the rise throughout the Northeast, and it's spreading into the Midwest. It was once called Nantucket fever because the first cases were documented on that Massachusetts island more than 50 years ago. But now, a sign of hope - this month, a new clinical trial begins to test a medicine aimed at treating the infection. NPR's Allison Aubrey reports.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Micheline LeBlanc knew something was up in the summer of 2022. She felt fatigued, lost her appetite, and had body aches.
MICHELINE LEBLANC: Headaches were a big problem. Night sweats were dramatic.
AUBREY: When she developed throbbing pain in her legs and shortness of breath, her husband took her to the hospital.
LEBLANC: The ER staff ran scans and tests. And when I left the ER, I had been diagnosed with Lyme disease.
AUBREY: They sent her home with antibiotics. But later that week, her doctor called to tell her that a blood test showed she actually had a different tick-borne illness, babesiosis, which she said she'd never heard of.
LEBLANC: I didn't even know what to say. I just thought, oh, and she said, well, it's a tick disease.
AUBREY: LeBlanc lives in New Hampshire, where tick-borne illnesses have become more prevalent, including babesiosis. Here's doctor Linden Hu of Tufts University.
LINDEN HU: It does seem to be following the trend of Lyme disease and entering into areas where Lyme disease is prevalent.
AUBREY: Babesiosis is caused by a parasite that infects red blood cells and spreads primarily through deer ticks. Dr. Hu has treated patients with it.
HU: For most people, babesiosis - it's pretty mild, and it's just a fever that can take a couple days to a week or two to go away.
AUBREY: Micheline LeBlanc's doctors gave her two medicines and she did get better, but within a month or so, her symptoms came back.
LEBLANC: It was a roller coaster ride. I would get better, but I always felt like I was relapsing.
AUBREY: LeBlanc is 72 years old and had her spleen removed in her 20s. She knew she had a weakened immune system. And Dr. Peter Krause of Yale University says this put her in a high-risk category.
PETER KRAUSE: These patients usually have many relapses lasting months or sometimes even years, and there's about a 20% mortality rate.
AUBREY: Dr. Krause and his collaborators had found that an anti-malaria drug called tafenoquine could help clear the parasite in animal studies, and some doctors had begun to use the drug off-label to treat patients with relapsing babesiosis. Dr. Krause assessed a small group of patients, including LeBlanc, who took tafenoquine along with two other drugs, and he says it worked.
KRAUSE: They no longer had symptoms, and they no longer had the organism in their blood.
AUBREY: The clinical trial that starts this month will test whether adding tafenoquine to existing treatments will help clear the disease faster among people who are hospitalized. LeBlanc says once they added tafenoquine to her regimen, she got much better. For months, blood test had shown the parasite was still there.
LEBLANC: Finally, it was tafenoquine, and started to go down, and went down, and then it was, you know, not even found in my system. I was elated.
AUBREY: It's been about a year, and she says her life feels normal again. She's back to line dancing and volunteering and doing all the things she enjoys.
Allison Aubrey, NPR News.
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