Save Your Tick & Send for Testing!
If you or your child is bitten, send your tick and even tick parts for testing! Then we can accurately know if you need antibiotic treatment. Lyme disease is VERY common in Indiana ticks and nationwide, and can cause life altering, disabling and even fatal illness. Lyme disease and other co-infections can become chronic and be extremely severe and difficult to diagnose and treat.
Remember, the best treatment for Lyme Disease is PREVENTION! The best prevention includes permethrin. Please read our Prevention of Tick Bite article: Save Your Tick & Send for Testing! and share with all your family and friends!
The laboratory of Medical Zoology (LMZ) at the University of Massachusetts, a national tick testing lab, has been testing ticks for pathogens that cause Lyme disease since 2006.
Each year, since 2006 Dr. Stephen Rich, (PhD in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Irvine, 1997 and Director of The Laboratory of Medical Zoology at UMass) and his colleagues have collected thousands of ticks extracted from people and pets and sent in from all 50 states and Canada (an average of 6,000 ticks per year) to help map the distribution of different kinds of ticks and the many disease causing pathogens they carry.
The LMZ TickReport will provide testing for six bacterial species (including 4 types of Borrelia, Babesia, Ehrlichia, and Anaplasma) with a standard TickReport package for $50 per tick. The comprehensive TickReport (including all of the standard test results PLUS Rickettsia, Bartonella, and 10 other infectious diseases) is available for $200 per tick.
We recommend doing the $50 test or $200 testing. The $200 test is especially worth it if the tick has been embedded in the skin for a longer period of time. You will have your results within 3 business days.
Click here to order a TickReport test and place order for testing for pathogens that cause Lyme Disease. You will receive a mailing address after you submit payment.
Place your tick in a plastic bag with a moist cotton ball. The tick can be sent to LMZ via USPS, FedEx, or UPS (the lab will exam the tick and make sure the correct test applies to your tick species). Your results are securely delivered via email in 3 business days after the tick is received at LMZ at UMass.
IGeneX Labs has an online tick testing form & instructions that you can print out to send in your tick (is $75 for Borrelia, and increasing costs for more pathogen testing). It takes about two weeks to get the results, and so during that time you should be on antibiotics. Read below about the UMass tick test, because we feel this is the better one since results are back within 3 business days.
