CT hospital pioneering new technology to diagnose tick-borne illnesses faster amid peak season

Hartford Courant – Monday, April 27, 2026
By Stephen Underwood

Finding a tick on your body can be alarming, as scientists say they’re seeing a high level of ticks carrying Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses in Connecticut.

But new technology being used by a hospital in Waterbury is allowing for a faster diagnosis to provide quicker treatment.

Saint Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury is employing a PCR thermocycler that cuts the time to get a diagnosis from days to just merely hours. The machine performs in-house, rapid polymerase chain reaction or PCR testing after a patient gives a blood sample, according to Saint Mary’s Hospital chief medical officer Dr. Husnain Kermalli.

“This makes a big difference,” Kermalli said. “If we’re able to hone in on what we are looking for in a shorter period of time, that allows us to start treatment much sooner. Normally, we use broad spectrum antibiotics after a tick bite with a patient presenting symptoms. This allows us to cover all the various bacteria that one can acquire from ticks. But with a faster turnaround in diagnosis, we can tailor treatment with more precise antibiotics quicker. So the antibiotics stewardship capabilities are much greater.”

The DiaSorin Liaison MDX is one of the newest pieces of technology inside the hospital’s laboratory, he said. The machine currently tests for both anaplasmosis and babesiosis, two potentially serious tick-borne illnesses in humans. Kermalli said patients who recently discovered a tick and are presenting symptoms can have their blood tested with results delivered in about an hour. He said the hospital already has a Lyme disease testing program.

“These tick-borne illnesses can cause some pretty serious symptoms that are unique from Lyme disease,” Kermalli said. “So having this new rapid testing capability allows us to distinguish from Lyme disease and ensure we can tailor antibiotics toward these other illnesses. Anaplasmosis and babesiosis are both some of the most common tick-borne illnesses other than Lyme disease. So it’s important we can quickly distinguish what someone has to get them treatment.”

PCR testing is conducted through using different temperatures to create an amplification of a particular segment of DNA, Kermalli said. The machine can take a very small sample of DNA and make multiple copies of that same DNA strand. A thermal cycler machine uses heat cycles to break DNA apart and build new copies, allowing high-sensitivity detection of viruses or bacteria within about an hour, he said.

The new machine was installed in late March, just in time for the state’s peak tick season. So far this year, Connecticut scientists have said a high number of ticks have tested positive for Lyme disease, anaplasmosis and babesiosis.

Babesiosis, transmitted by blacklegged ticks, can cause flu-like symptoms — fever, chills, fatigue and muscle aches — and can be severe or fatal in older adults or those with weakened immune systems, according to scientists. Anaplasmosis, also transmitted by blacklegged ticks, can cause fever, severe headache, chills, and muscle aches. While both are treatable with antibiotics like doxycycline, they can both cause severe, sometimes fatal, illnesses if treatment is delayed. Vulnerable groups including the elderly, infants and those with compromised immune systems are most at risk, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“During the past few weeks, we have received an average of 30 tick submissions per day for testing, and greater than 40% have tested positive for Lyme disease spirochetes. In addition, these ticks have tested positive for the pathogens responsible for babesiosis, anaplasmosis and Borrelia miyamotoi disease,” said Dr. Goudarz Molaei, director of the CAES tick testing program, said earlier this month.

Molaei said that several hundred cases of babesiosis and anaplasmosis were diagnosed in 2024, but the actual number of disease cases could be nearly 10 times higher, as many are not diagnosed. In that same year, 2,170 cases of Lyme disease were also diagnosed in Connecticut, he said.

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