You Can Now Test Ticks for Lyme Disease-Causing Bacteria at Home

It’s a rite of summer: enjoying time outdoors and all that nature has to offer. But that can come with dangers, and ticks, which can transmit Lyme disease, top the list. Not every tick carries Lyme, however—and there's no way to know whether the one that's bitten you does, unless you send it out to get tested.Until now, that meant finding a lab that conducts the test and waiting days for the results. Soon, you''ll be able to do it yourself at home. LymeAlert is the first at-home test for ticks that can detect whether they carry the bacterium Borrelia berdorferi that causes Lyme. To test your tick, you place it in the kit's container, drop in the included solution, put on the lid, crush the tick by twisting the top and grinding it up, and insert a test strip. Within 30 minutes, the strip tells you whether it detected any Lyme-causing bacteria in your tick. The kit is available for $49.99 to pre-order on the company’s website and will ship at the end of August. Dawicki, co-founder and CEO of LymeAlert and a physician assistant in Boston, came up with the idea after spending years fielding questions and requests from patients who had been bitten by ticks: Can you test me for Lyme? Can...