This is the Scientific American 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher in D'Alga. Got a minute?

Lyme disease may be the most well-known illness spread by ticks,

but it's far from the only one. The most common vector for Lyme is the deer tick, and it spreads five other known pathogens.

One of those pathogens is what's called the Babizia parasite. It infects red blood cells like malaria causing the

sometimes fatal disease babesiosis. Now we learn that these tick-born diseases may

have more in common than their host because Lyme disease may actually facilitate the spread of

babesiosis. That's according to a study in the journal Ploss 1. Researchers allowed ticks to feed

on mice infected with babiciosis, or with both Bobiciosis and Lyme.

And ticks that fed on mice with just Bobiciosis were less likely to pick up the parasites

than were ticks who munched on mice carrying both infections.

Study author Maria Duke Vassar of Columbia University says the one-two punch of both diseases could be too much for the mice to handle.

The immune system may be, we could say,

occupied with one pathogen and decreases

the response to the other one.

Based on field studies,

she and her co-authors believe the same phenomenon may be happening in nature too.

For now at least, Bubiiosis isn't as widespread as Lyme, and if these results are correct, cutting

down on Lyme's prevalence might also slow the spread of babeciosis.

So we would get a synergistic effect of a control method that would attack both diseases at the same time.

If that is, we can find a truly effective way to limit line.

Thanks for the minute.

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