Preventing Lyme disease exposure among outdoor workers Grant uri icon

abstract

  • 80% protection against lone star tick bites among outdoor workers in North Carolina. But there are three issues that need to be addressed before this finding can be translated into policy: 1) Do LLPI clothing protect against black legged ticks, the vector for Lyme disease, babesiosis and anaplasmosis, as well as against the lone star tick? 2) What levels of permethrin and its metabolites are absorbed, and are they potentially toxic? 3) Why did the LLPI clothing in our previous study lose efficacy after a year? To answer these questions, we propose a two year double-blind RCT with 200 outdoor workers in Lyme endemic areas of the Northeast. Outdoor workers from Cape Cod National Seashore, Fire Island National Seashore, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, and the National Grid will be randomly assigned to the treatment or control group. All study subjects will fill out weekly tick logs, collect attached ticks for later speciation and pathogen detection, and submit annual serum samples to test for exposure to tick-borne pathogens. A randomly selected subset of subjects will also be asked to submit urine samples for permethrin metabolite analysis at several time points during follow-up, as well as submit worn items of clothing for tick knockdown testing and permethrin measurement at the end of the first and second years. This project addresses the following NIOSH Priority Goals for Extramural Research: Goal 2: Reduce deleterious health and safety outcomes in workers more susceptible to injury or illness due to circumstances limiting options for safeguarding their own safety and health, Goal 7: Improve the health and well-being of forestry workers by reducing occupational causes or contributing factors to acute and chronic illness and disease. This research will address the agriculture, forestry, and fishing sector and personal protective technology cross-sector by evaluating the protective effectiveness and toxicological risk of long-lasting permethrin impregnated clothing for prevention of tick bites and tick-borne disease among forestry and park rangers. The results of this study could help protect tens of thousands of outdoor workers with exposure to ticks and tick-borne pathogens.

date/time interval

  • September 2015 - August 2019