Not Much Net Profit in Anti-Lyme Disease Line : Apparel: Manufacturers of outdoor gear figured mesh garments to keep out infected ticks would sell big. The public isn’t biting.

The last word in out couture these days is mesh.

Mesh jackets. Mesh pants. All kinds of mesh clothing.

But these netted garments, sold at a few select shops and through mail-order catalogues, have nothing to do with fashion. Their purpose is to protect the nation’s outdoors enthusiasts from mosquitoes, bugs and, most of all, ticks that spread Lyme disease.

Treated with repellents and insecticide, the protective gear is among several new anti-Lyme disease products swarming the market as public concern about the potentially crippling ailment grows.

Companies like Racine, Wis.-based S.C. Johnson Wax, maker of Off! and Raid, have broadened their product lines with new repellents while stepping up advertising for the second year in a row. Individual entrepreneurs are tinkering with things like tick-removal kits.

With the summer recreation season nearing an end, the latest marketing push has been aimed at hunters who will head into the woods this fall.

“The market is now just flooded with things,” said John Browning, co-owner of Adventures Unlimited, which sells backpacking gear in the Milwaukee area. “There are things that you put on your skin, there are things that you put on your clothes, and there are things that you put over your clothes.”

Lyme disease--named after the Connecticut town where it first surfaced in the mid-1970s--is transmitted by a bite from the tiny Ixodes dammini, or deer tick, found on deer, mice, birds and other animals in woods and fields.

The disease, which is treated with antibiotics, can cause arthritis, lethargy, heart disorders and other symptoms.

About 14,000 cases have been reported to the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta since 1982, when it was designated a reportable disease. Concern has increased dramatically since 1988.

“It is by definition in epidemic proportions, particularly in the Northeast Seaboard, the upper Midwest and the West Coast,” said Andrea Dlesk, director of the Lyme Disease Center at the Marshfield Clinic in Milwaukee.

No documented cases of Lyme disease had been reported in Orange County through July, although seven county residents had contracted the disease in other areas, according to public health officials.

The proportion of infected ticks in California is about 1.3%, officials said, contrasted with 70% to 100% in some Eastern regions.

But Dlesk said she thinks that worries about Lyme disease may be overblown. “It’s an infectious disease. It responds to antibiotic therapy, for heaven’s sake!”

Nonetheless, companies have responded to the furor by providing consumers with information and protection from the disease-carrying ticks, with new products and different twists on old ones.

Johnson Wax added Raid Outdoor Tick Killer and Ticks OFF! this year to its line of repellents and insecticides. The items are being sold in limited distribution areas, said company spokeswoman Barbara Jorgensen.

“It was response to some research that we did that told us there was a great deal of consumer confusion that existed,” she said.

Tender Corp., a Littleton N.H.-based manufacturer of Ben’s 100 insect repellent, made changes in its packaging “to point out to our customers that this is and always has been a tick repellent,” said Sharon Bush, marketing vice president.

Tick-removal kits are also making the rounds. But Dave Jefferies, a buyer for Gander Mountain Inc., a Wilmot, Wis., mail-order distributor of outdoors products, said, “Basically all they are is a pair of tweezers and a little container of antiseptic.”

Jefferies said his customers, mainly fishermen and hunters, like such kits but also want products aimed at preventing Lyme disease while they’re out in the woods.

Makers of mesh clothing and other protective gear are hoping those concerns will spur sales that, by some accounts, are lackluster.

Yvonne J. Schilling, creator of Milwaukee-based Bug Out Outdoor Wear Ltd., said she’s sold only about 300 pieces of her protective gear--which includes mesh pants, hooded jackets and ankle protectors.

“I’m not making a million at it,” Lou Betzwieser, owner of Milwaukee-based Creative Comforts, said of the mesh jackets he sells for around $29.50 apiece. The jackets have to be retreated with repellents and an insecticide every 48 hours.

Susan Henley, an avid hiker, says she prefers regular insect repellent during “the buggy season.”

“I cannot imagine hiking down the trail totally covered in this mesh,” said Henley, executive director of the American Hiking Society in Washington. “Certainly for me it would detract from the experience of hiking.”

But Betzwieser says he’s optimistic about such products catching on and helping ease people’s fears about the disease.

“I think it’s going to break open,” he said. “People are going to learn what to do about Lyme disease with products like mine.”