As Americans head outdoors to enjoy the warm weather, more and more are being sickened by ticks, tiny creatures that can transmit a number of serious diseases.
Justin Timberlake announced on July 31, that he is one of the estimated 476,000 people that are diagnosed with and treated for Lyme disease each year, an illness often transmitted through tick bites that Timberlake called "relentlessly debilitating."
Meanwhile, emergency room visits related to tick bites have spiked in 2025, reaching their highest level in five years, according to the CDC's Tick Bite Data Tracker.
The CDC reported by July 6 that the number of emergency department visits for tick bites had already exceeded nearly 10 years of July records, with 92 visits per 100,000 reported across the nation. Children ages 0 to 9 and people over the age of 70 were the most common of these ER visitors.
Climate change is one of the main factors impacting tick populations, according to experts at the Binghamton University Tick-borne Disease Center.
