New Tick Collection Kits at Sanford Bemidji to Aid in Research Study

The Marshfield Clinic Research Institute in Wisconsin, now a part of Sanford Health, is branching out to Minnesota for assistance with its tick research and citizen scientist study.

The institute has collected more than 10,000 specimens since its project started last year to figure out where the ticks come from, how many there are, and what pathogens they carry. There are now collection kits around Wisconsin and Minnesota to let people send in ticks that they find to the research study.

“They can call us, we can give them a kit, we send it to their house, or they can pick it up at a Sanford clinic in the Bemidji region,” said Jennifer Meece, a research scientist with Marshfield’s Tick Inventory via Citizen Science (TICS) project. “It’s really simple—it’s self-addressed, they send it back to us, we identify it. They retain an identifier so they can go on to our interactive map and find their tick.”

The most well-known disease that ticks can carry is Lyme disease, which the CDC says affects around 476,000 people in the United States every year. But there are many more dangers that ticks can carry as well.

“Anaplasmosis or ehrlichiosis, babesiosis—all of them are transmitted by the blacklegged tick,” Meece said. “Some people call it the deer tick, so that’s the one that we’re really particularly interested in getting our hands on.”

The number of cases of Lyme disease increases every year, and migration habits and new pathogens have changed why the study of ticks is so important.

“Ultimately, what we want to do is prevent illness,” Meece emphasized. “By kind of putting it at front of mind for people, maybe we can prevent people from getting Lyme disease or anaplasmosis or ehrlichiosis or any of the other tick-borne pathogens that we know are in the Upper Midwest. If people are wary of getting these diseases, maybe they’ll do those preventative things. Maybe they’ll do the tick checks. But it also maybe gets people to be diagnosed earlier because early diagnosis results in better outcomes, almost always with anything.”

The new tick collection and drop-off kits in the northern Minnesota area are located at the Sanford Bemidji Walk-In Clinic at 1611 Anne Street NW. For more information, or to request a pre-paid collection kit be sent directly to you, email [email protected] or call 715-389-7796 ext. 16462

The TICS research team said that in the future, they would like to do other collaborations with medical centers, on walking trails, or other locations that get a lot of tick traffic.