Tick ​​season: how to get rid of ticks and what you need to know about these leeches

Be inspired by a weekly summary on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for news and tools designed to improve your well-being..

CNN
—

Maybe you’ve spotted one crawling up your leg after a hike in tall grass or felt one on your dog’s back as you ran your hand through his fur. If you’re unlucky, you may have found one already burrowed into your skin, engorged with your blood.

Ticks are parasitic leeches capable of spreading deadly diseases, and they are becoming more and more common. Here’s what you need to know about them.

Ticks are arachnids, close cousins ​​of mites and more distant cousins ​​of spiders. There are over 800 species of ticks found worldwide and 84 have been documented in the United States. However, in the United States, only a handful of them bite and transmit disease to humans. The most common are blacklegged ticks (also known as deer ticks, but they feed on many animals other than deer), lone star ticks, American dog ticks, and brown dog ticks.

After a tick egg hatches, it goes through three life stages: larva, nymph and adult. Both male and female ticks feed on blood by inserting their barbed, straw-like mouthparts into their host’s skin (unlike mosquitoes, which only bite if females are preparing to lay eggs). However, only female ticks drink to the point of engorgement.

“When you see a female that’s very large and engorged, that means she’s going to lay eggs and start that life cycle process again,” said Kait Chapman, an extension educator and urban entomologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The size and appearance of these arachnids change greatly depending on their age and the amount of blood they have drunk. “If you put these unfed blacklegged ticks on a poppy seed bagel, they blend in really well,” said Dr. Thomas Mather, professor of public health entomology at the University of Rhode Island and director of the Research center of this school. Vector-borne diseases and its TickEncounter resource center. During this time, an engorged adult female of the same species can swell to the size of a pea.

Tick ​​bites and diseases

Although there are months when different species and life stages are more active, it is possible to be bitten by a tick at any time of the year. If you find a tick attached to you (or your pet), you should remove it carefully.

“The recommendation is to use a pair of tweezers, place the tick by the head as close to the skin as possible and pull it straight out,” Chapman said. “We don’t want to twist, because we might leave part of that mouthpart embedded in the skin. And we don’t want to grab the body, because if you squeeze the body, the tick might regurgitate more, which means you increase the risk of getting a tick-borne disease.

Your impulse might be to crush the freshly removed tick, but it’s best to drown it with hand sanitizer or rubbing alcohol and save it to show an expert or at least take a photo. This way you can identify what type of tick it is and how long it has been feeding; The University of Rhode Island’s TickEncounter website offers tools based on coloring, size and geographic location.

It is important to identify the tick because certain species carry different diseases. They pick up bacteria, viruses, and other microbes from the blood of infected hosts, and when they bite a new victim, they can transmit these pathogens.

The larvae and nymphs of black-legged ticks, for example, often feed on white-legged mice, which may carry a bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi. When a tick that feeds on one of these infected mice then feeds on a human, it can transmit the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.

Lone star ticks, on the other hand, do not feed on white-footed mice and therefore do not carry Lyme. (They do, however, carry other disease-causing microbes, and their bites can introduce a sugar molecule into the bloodstream that makes people allergic to red meat.)

In a September 2023 study, researchers identified a protein that appears to play an important role in how certain ticks – including the deer tick and the western blacklegged tick – become infected with the harmful bacteria Anaplasma phagocytophilum before transmit to human hosts and cause anaplasmosis. which is different from Lyme disease.

Anaplasmosis can cause severe headache, fever and chills, vomiting and fatigue, according to Cedars-Sinai.

Understanding this protein could give scientists a better idea of ​​how to stop the spread of disease by ticks, according to the study. But there is still a lot of research to be done before we can achieve this.

Tick-borne illnesses can be debilitating and even fatal, and the risk of infection increases the longer you have a tick on you. Although there are some treatments available, it is best to avoid getting bitten in the first place.

Various studies have suggested factors that may play a role in tick attraction, including a recent paper showing a link between tick attraction and static electricity in the laboratory. And although ticks are attracted to signals such as carbon dioxide exhaled by animals, they tend to wait rather than actively seek out prey.

“Contrary to popular belief, they do not fall from trees. They just sit on the edge of a large blade of grass, for example, that’s maybe hanging down somewhere, and they stick out their front leg. We call it a quest,” Chapman said. “They’ll wait for that host to brush past them, and so that’s primarily how people get ticks: they brush past them; it attaches to their leg or clothing.

Insect repellents containing DEET, picaridin, and oil of lemon eucalyptus have been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency to protect against ticks. However, these chemicals work differently against ticks and mosquitoes.

For example, DEET “burns ticks’ legs, and they fall off because their legs burn,” instead of interfering with the tick’s ability to find its prey in the same way DEET affects mosquitoes, said Mather. Additionally, “as soon as the product is dried, it burns less, so it really doesn’t last very long for ticks.”

Instead, Chapman recommends preventing tick bites by covering your skin and tucking the bottom of your pants into your socks. Ticks are also killed by spending half an hour in the dryer, so throw your clothes away as soon as you get home, even before washing them.

Additionally, “we prefer to wear clothing treated with Permethrin — it’s much, much more effective” than insecticides, Mather said. “It blocks nerve conduction in the ticks, which makes them hyperexcited, and then they lose function pretty quickly, and it eventually kills them.” Depending on where you live, he said, it might also be a good idea to investigate extermination of ticks living in your yard.

These precautions may seem extreme, but for Mather they represent the way of the future, because “we live in a world where there are more ticks in more places and more people are exposed to them.”

Climate change may play some role in the spread of ticks, but Mather said he thinks the influx of parasites has more to do with white-tailed deer becoming more common in areas with higher densities. of population. As a result, he said, “more and more people are exposed to ticks that breed on white-tailed deer. »

Despite the spread of ticks and the seriousness of the illnesses they can cause, Chapman emphasized that with proper precautions (for you and your pets – ask your veterinarian about tick preventative measures), they should not hold you hostage inside your home.

“Yes, ticks exist. Yes, they can be a public health issue, but we don’t want you to let ticks keep you indoors,” she said. “You should still be able to get out and enjoy nature, but again, you just need to make those checks. So take some time. Do this.

Kate…