Impacts Over Time of Neighborhood-Scale Interventions to Control Ticks and Tick-Borne Disease Incidence

BACKGROUND: Controlling populations of ticks with biological or chemical acaricides is often advocated as a means of reducing human exposure to tick-borne diseases. Reducing tick abundance is expected to decrease immediate risk of tick encounters and disrupt pathogen transmission cycles, potentially reducing future exposure risk. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We designed a placebo-controlled, randomized multiyear study to assess whether two methods of controlling ticks—tick control system (TCS) bait boxes and Met52 spray—reduced tick abundance, tick encounters with people and outdoor pets, and reported cases of tick-borne diseases. The study was conducted in 24 residential neighborhoods in a Lyme disease endemic zone in New York State. We tested the hypotheses that TCS bait boxes and Met52, alone or together, would be associated with increasing reductions in tick abundance, tick encounters, and cases of tick-borne disease over the 4–5 years of the study. RESULTS: In neighborhoods with active TCS bait boxes, populations of blacklegged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) were not reduced over time in any of the three habitat types tested (forest, lawn, shrub/garden). There was no significant effect of Met52 on tick abundance overall, and there was no evidence for a compounding effect over time. Similarly, we observed no significant effect of either of the two tick control methods, used singly or together, on tick encounters or on reported cases of tick-borne diseases in humans overall, and there was no compounding effect over time. Thus, our hypothesis that effects of interventions would accumulate through time was not supported. CONCLUSIONS: The apparent inability of the selected tick control methods to reduce risk and incidence of tick-borne diseases after years of use requires further consideration.