Vineyard doctors, allergists and biologists have identified at least a dozen Islanders who have been formally diagnosed with alpha gal syndrome, a largely unstudied new syndrome.
His team of Harvard scientists collected 5,000 dog ticks and trapped 35 skunks and raccoons on the Vineyard this summer. Now, parasitologist Sam Telford wants something more to bring back to the lab in Boston - human blood.
Mr. Telford is on the hunt for clues to the mystery of tularemia, the rare and potentially fatal disease that has infected 23 people on the Island in the last three years, killing one man in 2000 who didn't seek medical treatment soon enough.
Nearly all of the victims were landscapers or people who make a living working outdoors.
State public health officials yesterday confirmed this year's third case of pneumonic tularemia, the rare and potentially fatal disease that killed a Chilmark man two years ago and has baffled scientists for the last three summers.
State health advisories warning people to wear dust masks when mowing the lawn or cutting brush may have put a dent in this summer's total for cases of tularemia, the rare disease that has an unexplained foothold on the Vineyard.
Public health officials this week confirmed the third case
of tularemia contracted on the Vineyard.
Are rabbits really to blame for last summer's outbreak of tularemia and for what could be a repeat performance this year?
Sam Telford, a parasitologist from Harvard University and the newest member of a team sent here to investigate why such a rare disease has taken hold on the Vineyard, doesn't think so. What's more, Mr. Telford is just as skeptical about the prevailing theory that most victims breathed in air particles contaminated with the tularemia bacteria.
A four-year-old boy from Newton is this year's first confirmed case of tularemia on the Vineyard, but state and Island health officials stopped far short of sounding an alarm this week over a new outbreak of the rare bacterial infection.
