New tick disease moves into La Crosse area

La Crosse area health officials are seeing more cases of a new tick-borne infection carried by the same deer tick that causes Lyme disease.

Gundersen Lutheran researchers have been monitoring anaplasmosis the last three years and report 50 human cases in the La Crosse area.

The researchers have developed a test for the disease and have been testing blood samples in Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation’s microbiology laboratories at the La Crosse Health Science Center.

“It is an emerging infection in this area,” said Dean Jobe, researcher and supervisor of Gundersen Lutheran’s laboratories. “In collecting ticks, we have found it in 10 to 15 percent of the ticks.”