#SWIMMERS ITCH FEET SKIN#

Michigan has long battled cercarial dermatitis, which was first identified in 1928 at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS) on Douglas Lake in the northwestern part of the state’s Lower Peninsula. We do not really know what the long-term implications might be,” he adds. “But on the other hand it has never really gotten significant recognition for being something that should be more intensely studied including by clinicians and epidemiologists. “Of course no one is crowing and saying this is a killer or this is a first-line public health problem,” says Eric Loker, a biologist at the University of New Mexico who spoke at last year’s MSIP conference.

They hope this-along with collecting data including wind velocity and direction, and water and air temperature-will help scientists learn when the parasites tend to be more abundant.

#SWIMMERS ITCH FEET SKIN#

Meanwhile, researchers are not only looking for creams that can help protect skin from the schistosomes but are also measuring how many of them are in the water at any given time. SEM of an avian schistosome cercaria penetrating human skin. Credit: Curtis L Blankespoor MSIP plans to help organize similar groups this summer in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Thanks in large part to the MSIP’s lobbying, Michigan’s 2016–17 government budget has provided $250,000 toward trapping common merganser ducks-blamed for 95 percent of the swimmer’s itch parasites in the popular tourist lakes of northwestern Michigan-and releasing them in areas where parasites cannot reproduce. This can trigger an allergic reaction in the form of violently itching red bumps that characterize swimmer’s itch.

But Michigan has taken the lead in battling it with research and control measures targeting ducks that act as hosts to schistosomes-near-microscopic, wormlike parasites whose larvae try to burrow into people’s skin. Few officials take swimmers itch (also called cercarial dermatitis) very seriously as a public health problem. With summer looming and people heading for lakes and waterholes for a refreshing dip, those “little buggers” will again become, in parts of the U.S., a very big holiday nuisance. “There are days when I can feel those little buggers grabbing me right when I am coming out of the water.” “Moms will come down to the beach and say, ‘Is Leslie itching?’” says Ritter, who has become well acquainted with the parasites she lures with her body. Ritter’s statistics were instrumental last year when the MSIP successfully lobbied the Michigan legislature to fund research and prevention. If her skin starts to tingle, she knows something in the lake is after her-and swimming lessons are canceled.įor the past few years Ritter has been sending the results of her unusual experiment to the Michigan Swimmer’s Itch Partnership (MSIP), a coalition of more than 20 Michigan watershed associations that shares research and raises public awareness about something lurking in these waters-a scary-sounding parasite that can really ruin someone’s day, even if it has long been considered medically harmless. After 30 minutes she gets out and records wind and temperature data. As head of the lifeguarding program at the Congregational Summer Assembly (a vacation community in northwest Michigan), Ritter wades into Crystal Lake up to her knees. Every morning for about eight weeks each summer, Leslie Ritter becomes bait.

Swimmers itch feet