The First At-Home Test for Infected Ticks Could Improve Lyme Disease Diagnosis

LymeAlert will hit the market in August. The latest tool against the tick-borne illness could become a medicine cabinet staple Kristen A. Schmitt | Freelance writer July 31, 2026 Of the estimated 899 species of ticks worldwide, about 90 are found in the continental U.S.; however, only four species are responsible for most of the infections found in the U.S. today. Tomasz Klejdysz/Getty Images Research shows that more than 31 million Americans—or nearly one in ten people—experience a tick bite every year. While some tick bites can be harmless, these parasitic arachnids that feed on both animals and people can transmit dozens of diseases in as little as 36 to 48 hours, including anaplasmosis, babesiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, alpha-gal syndrome and Lyme disease. This spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a spike in tick-borne-illness-related emergency room visits, with Lyme disease being the most common diagnosis. An estimated 476,000 patients are treated each year for Lyme disease, concentrated in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Upper Midwest, thanks to the prevalence of its carrier: blacklegged ticks. Erin Dawicki is no stranger to the increase in tick-borne illnesses, especially in New England where she resides. For the past few years, the pediatric physician associate in Boston has experienced a steady uptick in kids showing up in her office with “huge swollen joints and zero trauma,” she says—symptoms that signal Lyme arthritis, a condition that develops anywhere from one to a few months after an untreated tick bite. Lyme disease is easiest to treat during its early, or acute, stage, which makes quick tick identification critical for treatment. Most experience a “bull’s-eye” rash at the site of the bite, along with other symptoms, including fever, chills, headache, fatigue, muscle and joint aches, swollen lymph nodes, and neck stiffness. While the most common treatment is a 10- to 14-day course of antibiotics, the CDC also recommends a single 200-milligram dose of doxycycline within a 72-hour prophylactic window, if the tick had been attached for 36 hours, in areas where Lyme disease reports are high. Unfortunately, even treated, some people experience post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, previously known as “chronic Lyme disease.” This diagnosis comes with persistent fatigue, musculoskeletal pain or cognitive difficulties months after completing the appropriate antibiotic treatment. According to the CDC, time, and not additional antibiotics, is needed to overcome the syndrome. Because early treatment is critical for recovery, Dawicki’s mode of course is to complete a blood test while also prescribing antibiotics before even obtaining an official Lyme disease diagnosis. It bothers her that she has to “blanket prescribe because the risk of Lyme is so high,” she says, thus contributing to the growing antibiotic resistance health crisis within the United States. Dawicki’s “aha moment” came during a health care entrepreneurship course she took as a MIT Sloan fellow during her MBA program in 2024. Students selected one of three innovation tracks—Lyme disease, pharmaceuticals or Parkinson’s disease—to develop and pitch an original idea. From there, classmates formed collaborative teams to advance the strongest concepts. “I joined the class late and was assigned Lyme disease,” explains Dawicki. “Initially, my plan was to just check the box on the course, but the morning the pitches were due, an idea popped into my head.” So often her patients call her to report they have found a tick on their child. They’re worried and want to know the best course of action, but they can’t afford to come in for an office visit. As a medical professional, Dawicki understands the variables in health care accessibility, having patients concerned about the cost of care or taking time off work for an appointment, especially when the tick in question may not even be disease-carrying. “So, I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if they could just test the tick at home, and then they know immediately if it’s Lyme-infected?” Dawicki says. Fun fact: The U.S. National Tick Collection is the largest continuously curated collection of ticks in the world More than one million tick specimens are housed at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia. The collection, on loan from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, is an important resource for researchers studying the transmission of tick-borne illnesses. Why the uptick in ticks? Of the estimated 899 species of ticks worldwide, about 90 are found in the continental U.S.; however, only four species are responsible for most of the infections found in the U.S. today. Found across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Upper Midwest and Southeast, the blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis, is the most widespread of the tick species. It carries Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, Powassan virus and Borrelia miyamotoi disease. The western blacklegged tick, Ixodes pacificus, is found along the Pacific Coast, congregating mainly in California, Oregon and Washington, and it also carries Lyme disease and anaplasmosis. The lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum, originated in the Southeast but has recently spread across the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, carrying ehrlichiosis, Heartland virus, STARI and alpha-gal syndrome. Lastly, the American dog tick, Dermacentor variabilis, in the eastern U.S. as well as parts of the West, can carry Rocky Mountain spotted fever and tularemia. While other prevalent species include the Gulf Coast tick, Rocky Mountain wood tick and brown dog tick, they account for fewer human infections than the main four. “Thirty years ago, there were only two reports ever of the Ixodes ticks that can transmit Lyme disease, and those were both on one coyote in Kentucky,” says Brian Stevenson, a microbiologist at the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. He studies the Lyme disease bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and how it infects hosts and transitions between ticks and mammals. “Today, there are many, many other places where the range of the tick is expanding; therefore, the incidence or potential for Lyme disease is also expanding.” This expansion of ticks’ geographic range is due to warmer winters, lacking the historical deep freeze needed to keep ticks in check, and growing populations of white-tailed deer and white-footed mouse populations, the parasites’ preferred hosts. “They don’t fly or move that fast,” says Erika Machtinger, an entomologist at Pennsylvania State University with expertise on tick ecology and control. “Anything that changes in the local ecology or broad regional ecology has an impact on the tick.” She points to deforestation, reforestation and urban sprawl, all of which fragment natural habitat and change how wildlife and people navigate their environments. Those factors, along with the elimination of natural predators like wolves and mountain lions that previously kept deer numbers in check, mean ticks are out of control. “There’s a range of things that have happened, and it’s kind of created a perfect storm,” says Machtinger. “I do anticipate it’s going to get worse before it gets better.” The CDC has reported an increase in tick-borne diseases in recent decades, with the number of documented cases doubling or increasing by an even greater magnitude for anaplasmosis/ehrlichiosis, babesiosis, Lyme disease, Powassan virus disease and spotted fever rickettsioses; cases are concentrated in the Upper Midwest and Northeast, along with parts of the South, Southeast and Ohio Valley. While cases of pathogens and disease are easier to track, according to Machtinger, that doesn’t necessarily represent the whole picture. Instead, scientists look for long-term patterns and evidence of ticks “popping up in places and in numbers from surveillance that we haven’t seen before,” she says. “We don’t have any numbers on tick populations,” adds Machtinger. “We can get relative estimates in specific locations if surveillance is done over a period of years, but even then, it is not super accurate because tick collection can differ by time of day, day, week of the season, season and year.” The other issue is that tick research is only getting started. Stevenson, who is currently leading two studies aimed at fighting Lyme disease by turning the bacteria’s own internal systems against itself, notes that not all ticks are even infected with the same bacteria or the same level of bacteria. “For a tick to become infected, it needs to feed during its previous life stage,” Stevenson says. “When they hatch, they come out as larvae, and the larvae are not infected when they hatch, but if they feed on an infected mouse, say with Borrelia burgdorferi [the bacteria that causes Lyme], those larvae can acquire the infection.” Once they molt into nymphs, those nymphs can transmit the bacteria. “But it’s also possible that a larva fed on a mouse that wasn’t infected with Borrelia burgdorferi, which means the nymph doesn’t transmit the bacteria because it was never exposed to it,” he continues. “That’s why not every tick is going to be infectious. It really depends upon what they’re feeding on and if that host was infected.” One way to stay tick-safe is to learn how to recognize the different kinds of ticks, in order to understand what they may be carrying. “If the tick is not attached, which means it’s not feeding on you, therefore it’s not transmitting anything, whether or not that tick is infected makes absolutely no difference for your health,” says Stevenson. “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.”