Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Getting Cabin Fever Summer Cabin Dwellers Are More Likely Than Campers To Be Victims Of Ticks That Inflict Relapsing Fever

Rich Landers Outdoors Editor

While Lyme disease has captured national attention in the world of tick-borne ailments, relapsing fever continues to inflict the most suffering among people in the Inland Northwest.

Anglers, hikers and campers aren’t the main targets of the bloodsucking arachnids that transmit the organism that causes relapsing fever. People who stay in summer cabins on Lake Coeur d’Alene are the most common victims, research shows.

Don Anderson of the Sacred Heart Medical Center microbiology and research department confirms eight to fifteen cases of relapsing fever in this region each year.

“But a lot of cases simply go undiagnosed,” he said.

“The Lake Coeur d’Alene area is the primary source in this area, but that could be because of the large number of people concentrated around it.”

The Sandpoint area, Priest Lake and Hayden Lake areas all have produced relapsing fever cases, Anderson said. A small number of cases has turned up in the Edwall, Kettle Falls areas.

The tick appears to be associated with timbered areas, since no relapsing fever cases have been reported for the central Washington scablands, but some have occurred along the eastern rim of the Cascades.

Meanwhile, no confirmed cases of Lyme disease are known to have been contracted in Eastern Washington, Anderson said.

Relapsing fever is characterized by sickness and fever that inflicts a person for a few days, goes away and then repeats the cycle possibly for months.

Unlike Lyme disease, which can bring on arthritis, relapsing fever rarely has chronic symptoms, Anderson said.

Relapsing fever is transmitted by the soft-shelled tick known as Orinthodorus hermse, commonly found in old cabins where rodents such as chipmunks and squirrels have nested. However, few victims of the disease recall having been bitten by a tick, Anderson said.

The soft-shelled ticks that spread this disease are large enough to be detected in their adult stage. But like most ticks, they are virtually invisible in their nymphal stage, they are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

The Spokane area is infamous in medical literature for having the largest single episode of relapsing fever recorded in the United States.

In 1969, 11 of 42 Boy Scouts and leaders who camped overnight on Browne Mountain were infected.

Ten of 20 Scouts who spent the night in an old cabin contracted the disease, while only one of 22 who camped out in tents was infected, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The wood tick that causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever, lives in wild areas. However, the relapsing tick is more closely related to rodent nests.

Cabins are prime places to come in contact with the relapsing fever tick. Animals seek shelter and the ticks proliferate in those cabins, Anderson said.

A family of three in Mead apparently contracted the disease in March of 1991 right at their residence, Anderson said.

“Their sole source of heating was wood and they had 10 cords of it,” he said. “That’s a perfect place for rodents to nest and become hosts for the relapsing tick.”

ILLUSTRATION: Graphics: Reducing risk of infection

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story:

“How ticks bite” The tick plays an ecological role as food for birds. Unfortunately, to fulfill that role ticks survive by feeding on warmblooded animals. One of the more basic creatures in the forest, the tick breathes only several times an hour. It can wait on the end of a blade of grass for years waiting for a meal. When it finds a host, the tick generally crawls upward until it finds a cozy spot and begins working its mouth parts slowly and painlessly into the skin. The arachnid builds an adhesive wall to hold the mouth parts in the host’s skin. After several hours, the tick injects saliva into the host to aid it in sucking blood. When removing a tick, avoid squeezing its body or touching it with a hot match head. These practices can cause the tick to inject more bacteria-laden saliva. When the tick’s head is slowly pulled from the host, the attachment adhesive will peel off, looking like a wad of dead skin clinging to the mouth parts.

This sidebar appeared with the story:

“How ticks bite” The tick plays an ecological role as food for birds. Unfortunately, to fulfill that role ticks survive by feeding on warmblooded animals. One of the more basic creatures in the forest, the tick breathes only several times an hour. It can wait on the end of a blade of grass for years waiting for a meal. When it finds a host, the tick generally crawls upward until it finds a cozy spot and begins working its mouth parts slowly and painlessly into the skin. The arachnid builds an adhesive wall to hold the mouth parts in the host’s skin. After several hours, the tick injects saliva into the host to aid it in sucking blood. When removing a tick, avoid squeezing its body or touching it with a hot match head. These practices can cause the tick to inject more bacteria-laden saliva. When the tick’s head is slowly pulled from the host, the attachment adhesive will peel off, looking like a wad of dead skin clinging to the mouth parts.