Unfortunately, there are major issues with this approach.

The vendor claims "lab-level accuracy" (conveniently omitting the actual accuracy numbers), but the test is a lateral flow test, which means its Limit of Detection is going to be orders of magnitude worse than molecular tests. Tick tests do not require FDA clearance, so their claims are most likely unreviewed.

Existing lab tests for ticks are almost universally based on PCR.

Ticks are small (especially nymphs) and extracting enough material can be tricky even for molecular testing, so I can't imagine an LFT test working terribly well, especially for nymphs, which are responsible for a lot of Lyme infections due to being easy to miss.

The other, bigger problem is that the test result is mostly useless.

The risk of Lyme transmission from an infected tick ranges rougly from <1% for a fresh bite (<24h) to ~10-25% once the tick is engorged (72h+). A positive tick test result would be insufficiently predictive of Lyme disease transmission on its own to justify taking antibiotics in most cases in the absence of other symptoms.

And you can't trust negative results either due to limited sensitivity, so you can't rule out transmission either.

In my opinion, tests like this can lead to worse overall health outcomes due to unnecessary treatment or withholding prophylaxis from someone who otherwise qualifies.

Wow, this seems a pretty big deal.

Here in the UK, Lyme traditionally been a marginal problem (tick bites aren't) but we now have such rapid climate change, along with rapidly increasing wild deer and boar populations, that some areas in the UK are becoming risk zones on more or less the same level of risk as some US regions.

Alas the difference here is that education has not caught up to the USA: very few people have any grasp of the risk of Lyme because the high risk zones are, by and large, not well known, and they don't always correlate that well with the basic risk of acquiring a tick.

I think most specialists in the UK think this is likely to lead to a pretty big increase to infections before people learn, so maybe this sort of tool will help offset that.

I walk a lot in an area with some wild deer and boar, and I would love to have one of these in my cupboard as a precaution. Would be great to see them in supermarkets in high risk areas, too.

Buried way way down:

LymeAlert, which will sell for about $50, is designed to detect the presence of Borrelia burgdorferi, the pathogen known to cause Lyme disease, in a tick.

The test kit, which remains effective for up to 12 months, is simple to use. After carefully removing the tick with either tweezers or a tick-removal tool, you place it into the kit’s “Tick Crusher.” The grinder pulverizes the tick’s chitinous exterior, exposing the internal contents where the Borrelia burgdorferi is located. A patent-pending buffer solution readies the sample for testing. The user then inserts a test strip into a slot in the grinder. The strip’s chemically treated nitrocellulose paper functions as an immunochromatographic assay that can detect the presence of Borrelia burgdorferi.

There are MANY facebook groups filled with people fully convinced that they have Lyme disease. These groups teach that virtually any and every symptom is caused by the infection and that basically everyone has it. As if this wasn’t insane enough, the people in the group will push each other to go on antibiotics - via so called lyme literate doctors - until they are on the verge of death due to the side effects. Worse: if a lab test is negative they say you should treat by symptom (referring people back to the massive list of virtually every known symptom as proof that they have lyme). It gets worse: even if you get really bad reactions to the treatment, they say you are having a herxheimer reaction and to keep pushing. It gets worse: having followed many of those groups for years, it’s rare that anyone actually gets better from whatever symptom they were having that led them down the self destructive path of lyme self-diagnosis. Well, it actually is a bit worse: even if by some chance you did had a positive lyme test, and if by chance you did got years worth of antibiotics, SOT treatments, etc etc etc… and now you have finally a clean test- well actually it’s bartonella, or parasites, or babesia, or EBV or whatever … so you must carry on. And, it’s not that these people are idiots, it’s just that they fall into a very specific category: 1) have real symptoms, 2) have no real answers from medicine, 3) have internet access, 4) have no notion, not even a tiny spec, of the existence of a concept called falsifiability. So when i read that there’s a new at home test for lyme… on tics(!) i can only imagine the massive amount of suffering this will cause on these poor people… and i imagine many if them will put their blood on the test and come up with all kinds of ways to use this to find yet another proof that they have it

As a parent in the US northeast who likes taking their kids camping and hiking, ticks have been an ongoing conversation this year. I think this is going to sell well.

A really accurate blood test for tick borne disease would be much more useful that would allow you to know you have something in a time frame you could treat the diseases early.

The most interesting part:

> After carefully removing the tick with either tweezers or a tick-removal tool, you place it into the kit’s “Tick Crusher.” The grinder pulverizes the tick’s chitinous exterior, exposing the internal contents where the Borrelia burgdorferi is located

If not this, then what?

Like others, I was interested in the article because of Lyme and other diseases. Ticks really do suck.

I appreciate all the science-y comments though I understand very little. I appreciate comments about personal experiences with ticks, getting bitten, and getting sick.

I’m left with this: If this test is not really a viable solution (or at least one solution) to the problem of the unaffordability of visits to the doctor, what is a better solution. I would put all options on the table and move things like universal health care to the “working on it but not helpful right now” pile of solutions.

I live in Finland, and if I would be following this advice;

> "If you have an embedded tick where there’s a chance of infection, then go to your doctor and get a dose of antibiotics as a prophylactic, just to be on the safe side." ...I would be eating antibiotics 5 months per year each year of my life. I've had 13 ticks this summer, and it's the least I've ever had in a summer ever I think. I sometimes go over a 100 on a summer. But I've just had Lyme's disease once confirmed, but before that I had anti-bodies (which I got to know through a research project i participated in).

There's a lot of research on ticks going on in Finland, and I participate in two citizen science projects* this summer; for one I collect the ticks and send them to the researchers, the other project I just post observations.

I quickly realized it was a hassel to submit to both projects every time I found a tick on me or the cats. So I used Claude Code to build my own self-hosted app that stores my profile, location etc and submits my findings to both of the projects. Simple and nice litte project. I have a thought of publishing the app in some form, but haven't thought about it much.

*https://www.punkkilive.fi/en and https://punkkipankki.fi

I saw a commercial for this. I am not sure it makes much sense unless you literally are 100% sure that was the only tick. And it is like I think $40 or $50 a test. I am sure the women I saw discussing the satisfaction they got enjoyed crushing up those little bad guys, and maybe some placebo-like relief, but the truth of the matter is the only really reliable tests for Lyme Disease are blood tests.

Only some kinds ticks carry Lyme disease. Sadly I tried the e-Tick identification system and it was beyond useless.

Does diagnosis offer a better prognosis for those that are infected?

According to evidence based medicine, infected tick's bite is not equal to infection of the patient. It means that the test can be false positive and based solely on it, people would start exhausting treatment for nothing

Great. Let's get working on preventing/curing alpha-gal allergy though.

Or actually let's just eradicate all ticks.

Why test ticks for Lyme Disease? Make a cheap, accurate test for Lyme disease in humans!

Jeez! Chasing ticks, c'mon, really, my f*ing intelligence is insulted by the suggestion.

Why can't the government or a generic drug manufacturer just produce the Lyme Disease vaccine? It is safe and the patent has expired!

(Also, I have the same question about the poison ivy immunotherapy pills that were common in the US before the FDA.)

Sign me up.

Used to be a big Event Of The Year when my grandpa found one after spending all day out in their 'garden' (a few acres bordering deep woods). I remember being maybe 11 when he found one, let me try and figure out how to crush it, I couldn't. He showed me how to use the butt of a butterknife and leverage to get the fuckers

I don't live anywhere near a proper forest and we've had several close calls this year, I caught one crawling across my scalp when I was getting into bed last month. Went and got tested just to be safe

I know feeding crows is really fun, but please don't. It's very important that they get hungry enough to eat mice sometimes. Same goes for deer, the past couple of years I've had them walk _towards_ me and my dog instead of bolting, presumably because someone is feeding them (by hand, not garden raiding)

This is great (if it's accurate) but the real gem would be a vaccine, which is apparently also coming out soon.

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Another step towards a vaccine, I hope.