Tick-borne Disease Laboratory

General Information

The Tick-borne Disease Program offers testing of human, animal and tick samples for the presence of tick-associated pathogens by polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based techniques. Both clinically validated and research-based testing protocols are available for testing a variety of pathogens.

Some examples of human tick-borne diseases tested in the program are:

• human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA)
• human monocytic ehrlichiosis (HME)
• human babesiosis
• Lyme disease
• Rocky Mountain spotted fever
• cat scratch disease
• trench fever

The program also conducts surveillance studies on various emerging human tick-borne diseases as well as on the tick vectors which carry pathogens causing the diseases.