while they may be small but they can also be dangerous I'm talking about ticks and New Jersey seems to be a favorite summer vacation spot for them as a Region's tick population has risen in recent years and so has the cases of new Lyme disease experts are now concerned those numbers could increase given the warm weather due to climate change and now Rutgers University is participating in a clinical trial that would test the efficacy and safety of a Lyme disease vaccine senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan reports you know ticks are kind of predictable so Rutgers researcher Matt bickerton fully expected to find some in this Bergen County Park as he swept the underbrush with a white baby blanket tacked to a pole the hunt took less than a minute look Asian longhorn ticks easy to see but teeny baby nymphs already climbing on his pants leg a lot harder to spot I wouldn't wear shorts and flip-flops through the woods people do that all the time and those people get do tend to get bit by ticks often multiple times bickerton's also found black legged ticks the ones that carry Lyme disease most folks call them deer ticks and they're thriving in New Jersey where deer ramble through leafy Suburban neighborhoods June July tend to be the periods when you know we really want people to be aware that you know Deer Tick nymphs are are active and your risk of getting Lyme disease are still high and that's when the most human cases occur I do think it's getting worse the climate is getting a lot hotter ticks like this humid weather and they survive the winter Gloria Kim says that's when her son got a chronic case of Lyme disease plus two other bacterial infections all from tick bites my son was actually bit November 12th on a cold day that had snow on the ground and two ticks still bit him they bite all year round and people just don't realize that a CDC map shows that since 2001 Lyme disease cases ebbed and flowed peaking in 2017 but in 2021 it's very clear New Jersey's still a hot spot the Department of Health logged 4300 new Lyme cases last year which indicates that the big problem is increasingly worse year by year Alvaro Toledo oversees tick research for Rutgers he says New Jersey doesn't conduct active long-term surveillance but New York does and he says that data shows several different ticks including the ones that transmit Lyme disease are following the warming climate into new habitats so it's migrating North we know that for a fact and it's migrating West the environment and the climate factors are suitable for this to settle in new areas last year Rutgers launched NJ ticks for Science and has gotten 500 ticks it plans to test for different pathogens Rutgers is also participating in a brand new Lyme vaccine trial Taylor Naughton signed up her son Sheamus to get the vla 15 shot made by Pfizer and the French firm valniva Seamus and I have both had lime before um so when I saw the opportunity to um sign him up for the trial um it was kind of a no-brainer the two-year trial involves 3 000 kids Nationwide up to a hundred here in New Jersey who'll get three doses of vaccine and a booster the last blind vaccine on the U.S market was withdrawn in 2002 due to side effects and negative press coverage the ticks are so bad this summer um that it's honestly giving me some um Peace of Mind ticks can transmit a host of other diseases and five to twenty percent of people who get Lyme disease contract a chronic form Gloria Kim's got a lime support website called families for Joy but says folks usually ignore Lyme disease they don't care about it until they get bit by a tick she says they should care her son Brandon's now 27 and still not fully recovered after enduring years of crippling painful symptoms from from chronic lyme disease she describes the devastation and outside of watching your son suffer and you feeling as a parent and as a failure that you're not making your son better because that's what mommies are supposed to do right they're supposed to kill everything and make it better Kim are just people to be cautious wear light-colored pants and long sleeves spray yourself with repellent in your clothes with pyrethrin and after being outdoors always do a tick check in Hackensack I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight News