The number of ticks that carry Lyme disease has been on the rise in the Mid-Atlantic States, and has skyrocketed throughout the Northeast. Despite its teeny-tiny size, the deer tick, a. Knowing these key facts about a deer tick is your first line of defense. Fact 2: Only adult females and nymphs can transmit infections through their bite. Adult females have red and brown bodies and are larger than males. Nymphs can be actively feeding between early April and early August.
Only ticks that have fed on infected mammals usually white-footed mice are infected. Deer ticks live two to three years, and in that time usually enjoy three blood meals. In the spring and summer of its second year, a nymph will take its second meal.
They insert their mouth parts into the skin much like a corkscrew, which ensures them a nice tight grasp. They often take up to five days to complete their meal. This fact is key to reducing panic when finding an attached tick: An infected tick must be attached to its host for at least 24 hours, and up to 48 hours to transmit the disease.
Deer ticks crawl. They usually grab onto people or animals that brush up against plants near ground level, and then they crawl upwards to find a quiet place for their blood meal.
Fact 7. Ticks live in wooded, brushy areas that provide food and cover for mice, deer and other mammals. The ideal tick environment is humid. Your exposure will be greatest along trails in the woods and fringe areas between woods and the border, where they will wait patiently on the tips of vegetation for an unsuspecting host to walk by. Life is too short to avoid the outdoors during spring, summer and fall. In Vermont, that would be over half the year!
Create a physical barrier between you and ticks. The tick has to have taken a "blood meal" from the human host before it can pass along an infection. This means the tick has to be attached and feeding for more than 36 hours before it can transmit Lyme. A tick that has not yet attached to the skin is easy to remove or is not engorged i.
The best way to remove a tick is with fine tweezers. Grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible and pull with firm, gentle pressure — do not jerk or twist. It is important to avoid crushing or squeezing the tick while you are removing it. Do NOT use a match, nail polish, Vaseline, or kerosene to try and smother the tick — these methods may cause the tick to actually inject its body fluids into the skin raising the possibility of disease transmission.
After tick removal wash your hands and the area of the bite with soap and water. Do not attempt to remove the mouthparts if they are left in the skin after tick removal.
As long as the body of the tick has been removed it can no longer transmit infection. The mouthparts will come out over time naturally. Trying to remove these mouthparts can cause more trauma and may cause a local skin infection.
Ticks are typically found on the underside of low lying shrubs and brush, in areas between forests and open grass and especially in areas where there are deer. They tend to also be in higher numbers in old stone walls where mice nest. Ticks in their immature or nymphal form are carried by mice, and by deer as adults.
When a human or animal goes past them, ticks latch on to the passerby and search for an area to attach and start feeding. Lyme is most common during late spring and summer when the nymphal ticks are more predominant, these ticks are so tiny about the size of a poppy seed that they are easier to miss than the adult-sized ticks about the size of a sesame seed. Adult ticks can still transmit Lyme disease but they are easier to spot so they are usually noticed and removed more quickly.
It is adult ticks that are responsible for the occurrence of Lyme disease during the fall and early winter. Good ways to prevent tick bites are to wear shoes, long-sleeved shirts, and long pants when outside, especially in brushy areas and areas that border forests. Tucking your pants into your socks and wearing high boots can also help. It is easier to see ticks on light-colored clothing, so that is another useful approach.
Applying bug spray to your clothing can repel ticks. After being outdoors it is important to do a thorough tick check of yourself and your children.
There are other labs around the country that will test the tick for a fee and IGenex in California is one and UMass Amherst is another. Free tick testing is available at Bay Area Lyme Foundation. Can I watch and wait? Watch and wait to evaluate for symptoms has been a realistic option in the past, but If you and your doctor do choose to watch and wait, you must be attentive not only to the development of a rash, but also to the subtle and variable symptoms that can occur and be ready to treat aggressively if they do.
Is one or 2 or 3 doses of Doxycycline the answer? Choosing to treat patients with one dose of Doxycyline on tick bite as recommended by the IDSA Clinical Practice Guidelines for certain tick bites is becoming very common, and may be being applied to situations for which it was not recommended, and may be very dangerous. The recommendation for this treatment came from a single study with insufficient follow up on patients who received this treatment.
Elizabeth Maloney has written a paper to this protocol which may be helpful to the provider who is recommending this very short treatment, Challenge to the Recommendation on the Prophylaxis of Lyme Disease. In short, the one dose of Doxycycline may prevent an antibody response, and may prevent the rash from appearing, but may not prevent disease dissemination. Opting for watch and wait may be the better choice. Other treatment considerations Some very small studies in the past failed to demonstrate a statistically significant benefit to treatment with 10 days of an antibiotic for tick bite.
Some physicians treat tick bite as if it were early Lyme disease with weeks of antibiotic. That antibiotic was active in mice for 19 days. There has not been a similar human study. Some considerations for determining whether or not to treat for a tick bite include the following: Is this a Deer tick Ixodes Scapularis or black-legged tick?
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