Tick-killing pill shows promising results in human trial

I&#x27;ve lived in an area that has dog ticks (not the Lyme carrying ones). I&#x27;ve pulled dozens of ticks off myself. I&#x27;ve never once had one attach, always caught them in time.<p>I got into archery during covid and would haul a target out onto some grasslands and shoot. My buddy and I would pull half a dozen ticks off ourselves at the end. I&#x27;d find ticks half dead on my car dash the next day.<p>We bought &quot;tick pants&quot;. Pants coated in some chemical that does something like this. Tuck them into our boots.<p>No more ticks.<p>Clothes coated in this drug seems like a good alternative to actually consuming the drug in my opinion.<p>Also I&#x27;ve been trying to spot a tick in the wild before it grabs me and have never done it. I want to see a &quot;questing&quot; tick, ie one that is holding on to the edge of a blade of grass with its arms out trying to grab something.

I live in rural area of the Ozarks where there are a lot of ticks. Treating shoes and clothes with permethrin is the most effective way to keep them off you.<p>And doing &quot;tick checks&quot; when you come inside your home is a habit here. Getting them off you fast is the best way to keep from getting lyme disease.<p>And either burning off or grinding up and piling up all the leaves to make compost this time of year is the best way to get them out of your yard.<p>I learned this the hard way. Here&#x27;s a video of how bad they can get here and one of my first attempts at trying to get rid of them. It didn&#x27;t really work very well:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;TFVDv8swzxQ?si=C4R064iTgRjdvSwv" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;TFVDv8swzxQ?si=C4R064iTgRjdvSwv</a>

I have hunting dogs that will pickup hundreds of ticks if not protected. I use Bravcto (Fluralaner) on them now, which is extremely effective. Hopefully lotilaner is similar with humans.<p>Most of the older generation of anti-tick meds have pretty substantial side effects and poor efficacy.

&gt; Thanks to climate change and exploding deer populations, ticks are expanding their ranges—and carrying diseases with them.<p>We’ve had our first run ins with ticks in our suburban Chicago backyard recently. They were never an issue before, and never literally just outside the door. I’m sure the unseasonably warm start to the year is to blame.

What&#x27;s super interesting about Lyme disease is that the cycle is larval and nymphal ticks get infected from (typically) a rodent, then if they feed on a deer, not only does the deer not get infected, it appears to cure the tick. Also female ticks do not pass this on to their offspring.

I bought property in 2021 with significant tick pressure. I’ve pulled dozens of ticks off me in the first couple years. The past two years I’ve been spraying Heterorhabditis bacteriophora and have seen significant improvement in that time. I have a tractor with a boom sprayer, which helps with large coverage. Obviously this is not a variable you can control in the wild, but for me, it has been super helpful on private land.

&gt; The experimental pill that Tarsus Pharmaceuticals is testing is a formulation of lotilaner, a drug that paralyzes and kills parasites by interfering with the way that signals are passed between their nerve cells.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lotilaner" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Lotilaner</a><p>Couldn&#x27;t find a good description of mechanism of action on Wikipedia. I also have nerve cells that need to communicate and damaging them just to spite a tick seems counterproductive.

I&#x27;m still waiting for nootkatone products to take off after reading about it in The Ultimate Hang back around 2011.<p>&quot;The active ingredient, nootkatone, is found in Alaska yellow cedar trees (also known as the Nootka cypress), some herbs, and citrus fruits. Biologists in CDC&#x27;s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases have found nootkatone to be an effective repellent and insecticide for use against ticks and mosquitoes.&quot;<p>It&#x27;s super effective and completely natural without any drawbacks, but apparently hard to synthesize on a commercial scale.

It seems to me that what we want is something like this but spread through the deer and mouse populations instead. Because in the case of lyme spreading ticks, their (complicated) lifecycle involves both of those populations. Deer carry huge populations of ticks.<p>If drops of food laced with this kind of thing were given to deer, I&#x27;d expect it to drop the tick populations significantly. Without risk of human side effects.<p>That and we need to cull deer populations and encourage predators of mice generally.

I grew up in an area with pervasive cattle ticks. I&#x27;ve pulled them off of myself, and pulled thousands from our dogs. My father claims to have once seen a lizard with a tick on its eyeball.<p>Our solution was a bit of sulfur powder in the dog&#x27;s food, and around the edges of the verandah, which was a home remedy suggested by the grey beards in the area. We never had any problems after that.

There was a vaccine on the market but was discontinued in 2002 by its manufacturer. I don&#x27;t know reasons why.<p>Pfizer currently has a Lymes vaccine study that I have some personal knowledge on that should be wrapped up in 2025: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pfizer.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;press-release&#x2F;press-release-detail&#x2F;pfizer-and-valneva-complete-recruitment-phase-3-valor-trial" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pfizer.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;press-release&#x2F;press-release-deta...</a><p>&gt; About the VALOR trial VALOR is an ongoing randomized, observer-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 3 trial which has enrolled 9,437* participants 5 years of age and older to receive VLA15 or a saline placebo (1:1 ratio). As part of the primary series, participants receive three doses of VLA15 within the first year at months 0, 2 and 5-9, and one booster dose 9-12 months after completion of the primary immunization.5 The final primary series vaccination for participants occurs just before the peak Lyme disease season for the region. Participants will be followed for the occurrence of Lyme disease. The trial is conducted at sites located in areas where Lyme disease is highly endemic across the U.S., Canada and Europe and has enrolled volunteers with a cleared past infection with Borrelia burgdorferi as well as Borrelia burgdorferi naïve volunteers.

There is natural human immunity to ticks, though fairly rare. In those individuals, the immune system detects a biting tick and kills it.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;acquired-tick-resistance-why-some-people-immune-to-ticks-2023-6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;acquired-tick-resistance-why...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statnews.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;07&#x2F;31&#x2F;acquired-tick-resistance-illness-vaccine-lyme&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statnews.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;07&#x2F;31&#x2F;acquired-tick-resistance...</a><p>That would be a superpower worth having. Perhaps a vaccine could confer this sort of immunity to us non-resistant folks?

Has anyone looked into giving these to mice and deer?<p>That would kill off deer ticks really quickly.

How do you get the tick to swallow the pill?

Ivermectin has been tested against certain ticks as well: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;34656045&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;34656045&#x2F;</a>

It is really impressive that they managed to get the ticks to eat the pills.

A lot of us didn&#x27;t grow up with ticks but have moved to places like the Bay Area where we do get them.<p>I think this serves as a good reminder that folks should be aware of common tick procedures like checking at the end of a walk if you have any and knowing how to remove them carefully (you don&#x27;t just pull them, you have to get the mouthpiece out - tweezers are recommended).<p>I&#x27;ve already had a tick bite this year from a walk in Marin county which is quite early. Fortunately, I felt it bite me and was able to remove it quickly.<p>It&#x27;s also worth noting you can get ticks tested for Lyme disease but it&#x27;s about $40.

I’m in a rural area. For the last 3 years, we’ve had ticks. It was bad last year. Supposed to be really bad this year. I’m spraying permethrin this year. Unless someone here has a better idea..

I’m outside a lot. Live on a farm in mid-atlantic US. I’m not opposed to chemical solutions, but I have a pretty effective mechanical approach to ticks [1]. Basically it takes advantage of a tick’s inclination to walk upward. Tuck your pants into socks and shirt into pants. Wear colors that contrast with the tick body and CHECK YOURSELF!<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hedgerider.farm&#x2F;blog&#x2F;ticks-go-up&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hedgerider.farm&#x2F;blog&#x2F;ticks-go-up&#x2F;</a>

I tried to interest any researcher in using an isoxazoline as a method of malaria control by offering it to people infected with malaria to protect their villages. The idea would be that mosquitoes that bite infected persons would die, reducing the population of infected mosquitoes.<p>Nobody wrote me back. If you are studying malaria and are interested in this approach, please run with it. I won&#x27;t be sore.

Its so crazy, and I&#x27;ve lived in rural areas, been hunting in Ozark woods, I&#x27;ve never gotten bit by a tick. A friend of mine was literally covered in them one day after shooting stuff, he put one on my hand and it jumped off. Needless to say he was jealous.

If you could give this drug to Deer, cattle, horses, and other livestock, it would significantly reduce the tick population. Remember Lymes disease is caused by a tick biting a deer before it bites a human.

This will be game-changing if it works for the Nordics. Here in Finland, ticks are an ongoing nuisance carrying lyme and also TBE (which can be vaccinated against). They are almost unavoidable if you go into nature during the warmer months and walk past any bushes, or long grass. Finland is also covered in forest too, and they can often be found falling from trees on top of hammocks and tents.

Good start as another layer of defense with DEET, clothing, and such.<p>The next iteration should be a pill that causes ticks to avoid humans altogether.<p>Bonus points if there were a pill that also causes mosquitos to avoid humans.

Sign me up! As a botanist I used to work in some areas where it would not be unusual to remove hundreds of ticks from my field clothes in a day. Inevitably one or two would slip through.

What’s the mechanism? You swallow a pill and it what? Enters your bloodstream and eventually makes its way out of the pores on your skin all over your body? For weeks?

&gt; <i>In most cases, a tick has to be attached for around 36 to 48 hours before the bacteria can be transmitted</i><p>That&#x27;s news to me.

&gt; Tick-killing pill shows promising results in human trial<p>Surely they could have given the treatment to ticks rather than humans? :)

Are ticks a new phenomenon? What about in the 1800s? Did explorers get them? How did they deal with them?

I&#x27;ve browsed through the topic.<p>Here in central europe ticks are a massive problem. Lyme&#x27;s caused serious year long health issues for a family member. It also almost killed my dog when he caught one of his first ticks ever.<p>I also do &quot;checks&quot;, avoid tall grasses and have the whole system for management of my family&#x27;s &quot;tick security&quot; (sometimes with their complain in the background). However, studying this problem basically every single summer I once found the alternative explanation as to why tick population today explodes globally in moderate climates.<p>Collapsed deer predator population[0]. Deer and small rodent populations are unchecked because predators can&#x27;t thrive in ecologically stressed areas (There&#x27;s little to no wild forests of enough of the size for wolf in most of Europe). Herbivores had far easier time adapting to the transformed environment compared to their natural predators. They also get less hunted by humans, obviously.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hal.science&#x2F;hal-03015707&#x2F;document" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hal.science&#x2F;hal-03015707&#x2F;document</a> (ctrl+f &gt; &quot;tick&quot;)<p>No amount of DEET will solve that. There&#x27;s also no need to CRISP&#x27;r anything or spend a decade of research on poor quality vaccination. This is system&#x27;s fragility problem.<p>Then again... ticks were a very common occurrence for the first settlers in North America. There&#x27;re diary entries mentioning them &quot;in swarms&quot; explicitly. But, what&#x27;s different today is that you don&#x27;t need to be even close to a deer trail to get 23 ticks of your dog after the walk.

As in... it also kills humans???

I grew up in an area where tickborne encephalitis is endemic. For those who don&#x27;t know, tickborne encephalitis is a delightful viral disease, with 5% lethality rate and a real chance of neurological damage in case of recovery. Oh, and the virus also persists throughout the whole life and can re-activated by antibiotics or other kinds of immune stress.<p>Our trips to the woods looked like a visit to a BSL-4 lab. Tightly buttoned shirts, long sleeves, checking each other after a visit, etc.<p>Fuck ticks.

Having to take a pill every few weeks seems like a major impediment to use. I could see certain hikers or forestry workers taking these pills but for your average few weekends a season camper, this isn’t the right solution given the cadence with which you need to take the pill.<p>What about the vaccine that was near approval a few decades ago?

there&#x27;s a vaccine for Lyme. I&#x27;d like that. not a pill that is literally poison, putting deet on our skin is bad enough.

&gt; The experimental pill that Tarsus Pharmaceuticals is testing is a formulation of lotilaner, a drug that paralyzes and kills parasites by interfering with the way that signals are passed between their nerve cells.<p>Who knows what effect this has on signals between our own nerve cells. Yikes.

We should think bigger: gene drive to eradicate ticks.

No, no, no.<p>Why bother killing the tick after a tick bite has delivered Lyme&#x27;s Borrelia burgdorferi spirochete? Even if it&#x27;s effective at killing ticks, it won&#x27;t stop Lyme transmission.<p>And for it to be effective at killing ticks, the human has to be completely steeped in this GABA channel blocker paralytic.<p>The eye drops offer no real safety guarantees because the dosages are no where near comparable. The human study of surface skin had no data on bites and a short observation period of 6 weeks (roughly the 11-day half-life x 5 half-lives to wash out the dose?).<p>----<p>The reported cost for ophthalmic 10ml solution of 0.25% lotilaner&#x2F;Xdemvy for mites is ~$2k.<p>Reported adverse effects in dogs of lotilaner from 2013-2018 were only ~250, compared to 4k-18K for other drugs (no data on prevalence&#x2F;usage).<p>It works as a GABA channel inhibitor (neurologic paralytic), specific to mites and perhaps ticks. No effect found in mammalian cells at ~11K&#x2F;daily dosage for the ophthalmic drops.<p>Human blepharitis study had ~400 people in treatment arm over 6 weeks, ~50% effective.<p>Half-life of 11 days. No reported reversal agent. So if it is toxic, you&#x27;re out of luck.<p>The optical solution is a tiny amount in the eyes, so little systemic exposure risk.<p>The tick pill involves much more systemic exposure via blood, so the eye drop experience says almost nothing about risk to humans.<p>I imagine the exposure to the tick from a blood bite is 10-1000x what it is from walking on the skin, so it&#x27;s not clear to me this would stop lyme&#x27;s Borrelia burgdorferi from being transmitted with the initial bite.<p>So: no.