Who are these pliers?
Since the school we know that ticks are small arthropod spider-like creatures related to the animal kingdom. On Earth there are more than 48 thousand species of ticks. Some of them live in the forest and in the taiga, suck the blood of small rodents and animals - rabbits, mice, and other inhabitants of forest and taiga massifs. They are not averse to drinking blood from a person, and as soon as the summer season begins, the victims of ticks are summer residents and their pets, forest walkers, tourists and people going on a picnic.
Other ticks live in the soil in our gardens and gardens. They cause great harm by sucking the juices from the plants, destroying the harvest, for example a spider mite, which also harms indoor plants.
There are dust or bed pliers that live in our homes. They live in sofas, in carpets, in pillows and in blankets. They are quite small, they can not be seen, but they bring great harm, causing itching and red spots on the skin, as well as allergic reactions.
There are also mites - meadow, steppe, canine, itch, eye, ear and others. But today we will turn our attention to ixodid ticks, typical carriers of encephalitis and borreliosis( and other equally dangerous diseases) - it is a taiga tick( also called a deer tick) and a European tick( popular name - encephalitis mites).
Where do encephalitis ticks live?
Ticks live in forest and taiga massifs. They live under a layer of fallen leaves and grass and attack their victims, creeping from bushes, leaves, grass, and from the ground. But from the trees, as many believe, ticks do not jump.
As soon as the sun begins to warm up, and the land is freed from the snow cover, the mites come out to hunt. They are attached with their tenacious limbs to the leaves of plants, they move closer to the paths through which a person moves, and they wait for their prey. Ticks have a good sense of smell, and they feel fresh blood. But they can not see the mites, because they do not have eyes. But they are able to distinguish between day and night. Once on a person or animal, the mites look for a suitable place on the body to suck.
Especially mites are active and aggressive in early spring, after a hungry winter they need food. So you can pick up a taiga tick from April to June, and even in July, and the European tick tickles from April to September.
What do ticks look like?
The body of the tick consists of two parts - the trunk and the head. On the back is a hard shield, and in the male it is brown and covers the entire back, and the female shield only covers a third of the back. The rest of the back is red-brown.
Ticks have four pairs of limbs, which consist of six segments. At the ends of these segments are claws with a sucker. With the help of suckers and claws, the tick is attached to plants, to human clothes, to animal wool. Behind the fourth pair of legs, the mites have breathing plates.
On the head of the tick there is a proboscis having a complex structure and adapted to suck and hold on the victim's body. On the proboscis there is a mouth with which the tick bites the body and sucks blood. The saliva of the tick has an analgesic effect and the person does not feel the sucking of the tick. The virus of encephalitis and other diseases enters the blood of a person with tick saliva when the mite sucks blood. The tick is not infected with encephalitis.
The female is larger than the male. It is believed that only females stick to the body and can suck blood up to several days. The body of the female grows when it gets drunk with blood, becomes ovoid and changes color to gray. Males only bite a man and can not suck blood for a long time.
What diseases does the tick endure?
The number of people bitten by ticks increases year by year. You can pick up mites more often not only in the forest, but also in suburban areas, in city parks and squares. Summer residents take them on their clothes in electric trains, in buses, in bouquets of flowers, with a harvest. From the clothes of people who visited the forest, the mites creep onto the passengers of the city transport, and a man with horror is discovered by a bloodsucker who sucked to his skin.
Of tick-borne diseases, tick-borne encephalitis, hemorrhagic fever and Lyme disease or borreliosis are most commonly known.
Symptoms of Tick-borne Encephalitis
Tick-borne encephalitis is transmitted by the bite of an encephalitic tick. Encephalitis is a dangerous viral disease that affects the central nervous system and the brain, can lead a person to disability and even to death.
The following forms of encephalitis are selected: febrile , meningeal, meningoencephalitic , polio .
The first symptoms of the disease appear within 1-2 weeks after sucking the tick, the disease begins with a sharp rise in body temperature to 39-40 degrees. The heat lasts for several days. At the first stage of the disease, the virus multiplies in the blood and intoxicates the body.
All forms of the disease begin with a rise in body temperature to 38-40 degrees, are marked by fever, general malaise, headaches in the forehead, temples, occiput, lethargy, weakness, lack of appetite, nausea.
In especially severe cases, cells of the brain and spinal cord are affected. The person has problems with the psyche, with sight and hearing, there is a violation of consciousness, there is numbness in the hands, cramps, paralysis. The last two forms of tick-borne encephalitis lead to disability and death.
With the feverish form of , there are headaches, nausea, weakness, the temperature lasts for several days, then the fever stops and the person recovers.
In the meningeal form of encephalitis, the person also has severe headaches, dizziness, photophobia and pain in the eyes, nausea and vomiting, inhibition. The fever lasts from one to two weeks.
With the meningoencephalic form of , hallucinations are added to the symptoms characteristic of the meningeal form, loss of orientation in time and space. A sick person may experience epilepsy, seizures, and loss of consciousness.
The poliomyelitis form of shows fatigue and severe weakness and pain in the neck, shoulders and hands, decreased skin sensitivity, twitching of the arm muscles, dangling of the head on the chest, numbness in the tissues of the hands, legs and muscle atrophy and paralysis of the limbs.
You can infect encephalitis not only from the tick bite, but also by squeezing the tick with your fingers. The danger of catching the infection is the raw milk of domestic goats, sheep, cows infected with a tick bite. Boiled milk is not dangerous.
You can see a video about the consequences of a tick bite.
Borreliosis or Lyme Disease
Borreliosis is an infectious disease that, like encephalitis, is transmitted to a person through a tick bite. Lyme disease has an early period( consists of two stages) and a late period( the third stage).
Symptoms of borreliosis
The disease begins with fever, with chills, with a headache. The person is tired, weak and aching in the muscles. Many people have cough, sore throat, runny nose, some have nausea and vomiting. On the skin where the tick sucked, there is a red spot - the migrating ring-shaped erythema, which appears on the 6th-23rd day. The spot has the shape of a circle or oval and increases to a diameter of 10-20 cm, sometimes it can reach a larger size. The spot persists for 2-3 weeks, pain, severe itching. Depending on the treatment, the first stage can last from 3 to 30 days and will end with recovery.
Without treatment in 1-3 months the causative agent of Borreliosis penetrates with blood into the internal organs, into the human brain. The patients have strong pulsating headaches, dizziness, chest pain, dyspnea. There is a defeat of the cardiovascular system, heart diseases develop, heart pains are noted. The nervous, musculoskeletal system is damaged. Patients may experience paralysis of the facial nerve, serous meningitis, pain in the spine( cervical, thoracic, lumbar spine).
In the third stage( develops from six months to two years) there are pains in the joints,( most often in the knee joints), arthritis, polyarthritis, osteoporosis and other diseases develop. Often there are lesions of the skin.
Lyme disease in each person proceeds in different ways: in some cases only the first stage is noted, in others the disease begins with the second or third stage. But if you do not carry out treatment, the disease becomes chronic and leads to disability. You can also get borreliosis from unboiled milk of domestic animals.
We offer you to watch a video about Lyme disease.
What should I do if the tick is bitten?
What if you found a sucking mite on your body? The first thing you need to ask for help in the emergency room, where from your body will remove the tick and there you will put an immunoglobulin against tick-borne encephalitis. If you are insured - for free, and if you do not have insurance you will have to pay a tidy sum( the higher the mass of your body, the more you will have to pay for the vaccine).
How to pull a tick?
If there is no possibility to seek help from a medical institution, you can extract the mite yourself. Pull the mite carefully so as not to damage it. You can pull it out with tweezers, picking the tick with tweezers at the proboscis, closer to the skin where the tick sucked. To pull sharply it is not necessary, to pull out the tick it is necessary accurately, swinging aside and pulling upwards.
If there were no tweezers at hand, you can use a strong thread. The loop from the thread should be thrown closer to the proboscis of the tick, tightened and tightened upwards, swinging the mite from side to side.
After the tick is removed, place the bite with iodine or alcohol.
The mite should be wrapped in a wet wad or cloth and placed in a vial with a lid or a box. And attributed to the examination for the presence of viruses encephalitis, borreliosis and other diseases in sanepidstanstvu. The next day you need to call SES and find out the results of the tests. If the tick is infected with tick-borne encephalitis or Lyme disease, it does not mean that you have caught the infection. It is not always the bite of an infected tick that causes the disease. Just you will be sent for examination in the clinic, where they will make a blood test. If viruses are found in the blood, you will be treated.
If you do not want to take the mite in the SES, it must be destroyed, it is best to burn it. Do not forget to wash your hands and tweezers well.
If you do not want to seek medical help, keep a close eye on your condition, and if you feel unwell or find the symptoms of the diseases described above, do not delay the visit to the clinic. Timely treatment will help you avoid terrible complications.
What should I do if the mite breaks off when I remove it myself? You just need to gently pick it with tweezers and pull it out. If the head or proboscis of the tick is deep in the wound, and you are afraid to remove it, you can go to the clinic. And you can just lubricate the wound with iodine and after a while, the remains of the mite parts will be on the surface of the skin along with the pustule and come out like a splinter.
There is an opinion that the sucking mite can be made to get out of the skin, oiling it. But experts do not advise so to do, as the tick from the oil will suffocate and die, regurgitating the contents of its stomach in the wound, and the infection will quickly penetrate the human body.
Prophylaxis against tick bite
Vaccination against tick encephalitis
In order not to catch such a dangerous disease as tick-borne encephalitis after a tick bite, vaccinations are provided. The course consists of three vaccinations, immunity from tick-borne encephalitis persists for up to three years.
Proper clothing
If you are going to the forest or your dacha is adjacent to the forest, you should dress properly. Clothes should cover your body. The outer clothing is tucked into the pants, and the pants are threaded into socks or boots, boots, sleeves of the jacket, jackets, shirts - with buttoned and tightly fitting cuffs, put a hood or hat on your head. On light clothing, the tick is more noticeable, so it is advisable to wear light clothing.
Every 15-20 minutes, inspect your clothes, your fellow travelers and if you find a tick, take off, but do not put pressure on your hands, you better burn it with a cigarette lighter or a match. After the trip, carefully examine your entire body, pay special attention to the auricles, armpits, inguinal areas, neck. Just carefully examine your clothes and things that you took with you into the woods, to the dacha.
Chemical protection
For the prevention of tick bites, use chemical agents-creams, aerosols that are sold in stores, pharmacies are repellents( repel ticks), acaricides( kill mites), and insecticide-repellent remedies( discourage and kill).
Treat chemicals with clothing - cuffs, collar, belts in trousers, as well as clothing around the ankles, knees, waist, waist, exposed areas of the body - face, neck, hands.
The country plot can be treated with special means, killing mites.
Medical insurance against tick-borne encephalitis
Insure yourself and your children every year against a tick bite. The cost of an insurance policy is not great from 200 to 250 rubles. If you are bitten by a tick, then medical care is provided free of charge( doctor's examination, tick removal, immunoglobulin administration, treatment in case of illness).Without an insurance policy for all medical services and treatment will have to pay.
Be careful walking in the woods, working or resting in the suburban area. Take care of yourself and watch your health!
How wonderful, when nature awakens, the first leaves are blossoming, the first flowers blossom, the wild garlic, the strawberry. And so wonderful to stroll through the forest, enjoying the fresh air, warm sunbeams, picking the first greens of fragrant wild garlic or the scented berries of strawberries - fresh vitamins. But with the awakening of nature, mites are awakened and also go out for walks to be saturated with fresh blood.
