Ticks and Tick Borne Diseases
Preventing Lyme Disease and Other Tick-Borne Illnesses
The risk of contracting an illness from a tick bite can be reduced by knowing the tick's life cycle, how to avoid being bitten, and how to remove a tick.
Ticks are often classified as insects, but ticks are actually external parasites that belong to the same class, Arachnida, as spiders, scorpions and mites. In her article entitled, "Background Information on the Biology of Ticks", Larisa Vredevoe, Ph.D, of the Entomology Department at the University of California, Davis, labels the tick as one of the most efficient disease spreaders of any bloodsucking arthropod, making them feared and detested worldwide.
North American Ticks
There are over 900 species of ticks worldwide.
In North America, there are two families of ticks, the Ixodidae (hard ticks) and Argasidae (soft ticks). Soft ticks feed off of birds and bats and are rarely encountered by humans. They often resemble a plump raisin. Hard ticks have a hard shield called the capitulum where their mouthparts are located. Unfed, hard ticks resemble a flat seed. After feeding off its host, a hard tick may become engorged up to ten times its original size.
Life Cycle of the Tick
In an article in FDA Consumer Magazine entitled "Fighting Fleas and Ticks", published in July/August of 1996, according to the United States Food and Drug Administration the life cycle of a tick involves four stages: egg, larval, nymph, and finally adult. Some species of ticks may lay 100 eggs at one time and other species may lay up to 6,000 in a batch. Once tick larvae emerge from their eggs, they go in search of their first blood meal. After a a larval tick has digested its first meal, it re-emerges as a nymph. Nymphs resemble adult ticks, in that they have eight legs. A nymph molts to become an adult. Some nymphs molt more than once.
Ticks Spreading Disease
Tick-borne diseases can be found throughout the United States in all 50 states and are increasing in number. Lyme disease, spread exclusively by the deer tick (Ixodes scapularis), is the most common tick-borne disease in the US today.
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, anaplasmosis, and ehrlichiosis are other diseases spread by ticks and infect thousands of people in the United States each year. All these tick-borne diseases cause mild to severe complications, and in rare cases, even death in those who contract them.
Prevention of Tick-Borne Diseases
Changes in weather, such as warmer days, signal a tick to actively seek a host. Ticks are typically thought of as summertime pests, but can remain active during mild winters. Since ticks do not hop or fly, they often hide and wait in high weeds or in the canopy of trees where the wind will eventually carry them to a host.
Ticks are very sensitive to exhaled carbon dioxide, and this allows them to detect when a host is nearby. For those who work outside, or live in an area that is wooded or surrounded by high weeds the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, Georgia, on its website, under the topic of Lyme Disease, offers the following precautions to prevent tick bites:
- Always wear long pants, a long sleeved shirt, and a hat when working outdoors in known tick infested areas. Tuck your pants legs into your socks.
- Do not stray from marked trails when hiking or camping.
- Use repellents containing DEET. Apply to skin and clothes. Never apply any repellent directly to the face.
- Immediately after returning from a hike or a walk in the woods, check your entire family for ticks.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the best way to remove a tick is to use fine-tipped tweezers and pull the tick straight out. Once the tick is removed clean the bite with soapy water and disinfect it again. Throw the tick away in the trash. Do not use petroleum jelly, nail polish remover, a hot match or anything else to remove a tick.
