Tick bite? What you should do to reduce your chances of getting sick

Internal Medicine

(SACRAMENTO)

Tick bites can make people sick and may spread Lyme disease and many other illnesses. A bite from one type of tick can even lead to a meat allergy. Tick exposure can occur year-round, but ticks are most active during warmer months (April-September). If you spend time outside walking, hiking or gardening, it’s important to know what to look for – and what to do if you are bitten or find a tick on your skin.  

Below are some steps that you can take after a tick bite to reduce your chances of getting sick and how to get treatment promptly if you do get sick.

If you find a tick attached to you

• Tick Removal: Use fine-tipped tweezers to grasp the tick as close to the skin as you can. Pull upward with steady, even pressure. Don’t twist or jerk the tick. After removing the tick, clean the bite area and your hands with rubbing alcohol or soap and water. Dispose of the tick by flushing it down the toilet. If you would like to bring the tick to your health care provider for identification, place the tick in a zippered plastic bag or sealed container with a moist cotton ball or paper towel. Check out these tick removal guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Consult with your health care provider: Consider talking to your health care provider if you live in an area where Lyme disease is common. Call your health care provider if you get any of the following symptoms:
  • Rash
  • Fever
  • Fatigue
  • Headache
  • Muscle pain
  • Joint swelling and pain
• Treatment: For tickborne diseases, treatment is based on symptoms, history of exposure to ticks, and in some cases, blood test results. Most tickborne diseases can be treated with a short course of antibiotics.

Top tips to prevent tick bites

If you are planning an outdoor activity, especially those in a heavily wooded area, it is important to follow a few simple precautions to protect yourself from tick bites.

• Wear long-sleeved, light-colored clothing, with tightly woven fabric. This gives ticks less area to target and allows you to see ticks on your clothing. Make sure you tuck your pants into your socks, shoes, or boots so that ticks cannot easily get under your pant legs.
• Use Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered insect repellent containing DEET, picaridin, IR3535, Oil of Lemon Eucalyptus (OLE), para-menthane-diol (PMD), or 2-undecanone. Treat clothing and gear with products containing 0.5% permethrin. Permethrin can be used to treat boots, clothing and camping gear and remains protective through several washings.
• When returning from the outdoors, check for ticks. Ticks can ride into your home on clothing and pets, then attach to a person later, so carefully examine pets, coats, and daypacks.
• Be sure to check your pets, too. You should discuss using tick prevention products for your pets with your veterinarian.
• Shower within two hours of coming indoors. It has been shown to reduce your risk of getting Lyme disease and may be effective in reducing the risk of other tickborne diseases. Showering may help wash off unattached ticks and it is a good opportunity to do a tick check.

Diseases, Symptoms, Fever, Allergic Reactions, & Flu-Like Symptoms

Written by WebMD Editorial Contributors

• How to Identify Tick Bites
• Tick Bite Symptoms
• How to Treat a Tick Bite
• When Should I Call My Doctor?
• How to Prevent Tick Bites

A lot of bites from little critters looking for their next meal are no big deal. You get a small red bump, maybe it’s itchy, and you move on. But if you have a tick, you want to know about it.

Ticks carry a lot of different diseases, some of them serious. Usually, early treatment is your key to a full and fast recovery. That means you need to know what to look for if a tick bites you.

Tick bites don’t always cause disease, but when they do, it can be serious. Photo: Moment/Getty Images

Ticks aren’t like bugs that bite you and then fly away or scoot off. When one gets on your body, it sets up camp. It finds a place to eat, then burrows its head into your skin and starts feeding. And it will stay there for several days.

Most likely, you won’t feel anything because the bite doesn’t hurt, and it isn’t usually itchy. Because ticks are often very small, you might not see it either. At first, it might just look like a fleck of dirt. As it feeds though, it swells up and can be easier to find.

You might get a small red bump where the tick bites you. Some people’s bodies react to ticks with 1 to 2 inches of redness around the bite. That red area won’t get any bigger, unless it’s really a rash, which is a sign of disease.

Ticks typically bite people in warm, moist, or hairy areas, like the:

• Scalp
• Skin behind the ear
• Armpit
• Groin
• Skin between your fingers and toes

Once a tick finds a place to feed, it will stay there anywhere from a few days to 2 weeks. Ticks bite once and use that site to feed on your blood until they’re full. A tick will fall off on its own once it’s full. You won’t get multiple bites from a tick. Most tick bites are painless and cause only a minor reaction. Only sometimes do they transmit disease.

Tick bites often cause a reaction on your skin, even when they’re not infected or disease-causing. Typical symptoms of a tick bite may include:

• A small hard bump or sore
• Redness
• Swelling

Unlike other bites, tick bites don’t usually have fluid or pus in them, unless they’re infected.

Most diseases from ticks also give you flu-like symptoms, such as:

• Body aches
• Chills
• Feeling very tired
• A fever
• A headache

With Lyme disease, you may also have joint pain.

Only some diseases from ticks give you a rash. What it looks like depends on which kind you have.

Lyme disease: Most people with Lyme disease get a rash, but not all of them. It shows up within 3-30 days after you were bitten, but it usually takes just over a week.

You’ll see a round or oval area of redness around the bite. At first, it may look just like a reaction to the bite, but the rash gets bigger over days or even weeks. Typically, it reaches about 6 inches wide. It might feel warm, but it’s not usually painful or itchy.

Most people think of the bull’s-eye rash when they hear about Lyme disease. That happens in less than half the cases, and it comes after the rash has been around for a while.

On lighter skin, the faint color and border of the rash might be more noticeable. But on darker skin, it may be less visible.

You could also notice a crusted center within the rash. If you have darker skin, this may look like a deeper-colored patch of skin. On lighter skin, it may appear as a red scabby area.

Lyme disease rashes can show up in different shapes and colors. Rashes on light skin tend to be redder and bluer, while rashes on dark skin may be a deeper blue or purple. But everyone’s rash will look slightly different.

Rocky Mountain spotted fever: Most people with RMSF get a rash 2-5 days after they first get symptoms. It won’t look the same on everyone, but it usually starts as small, flat, pink spots on your wrists and ankles.

It spreads from there to the rest of your body. In about half the cases, the spots turn red or purple after about a week.

While the spots may be more noticeable on lighter skin, they may be fainter on darker skin. This means that Rocky Mountain spotted fever can be easily missed in people with dark skin.

Southern tick-associated rash illness: With STARI, you get a rash just like Lyme disease: a red bull’s-eye with the bite in the center.

Tularemia: There are different types of tularemia, but with the most common one, you get a painful open sore where the tick bit you.

Ehrlichiosis: Children get the rash more often than adults. The rash can vary from small, flat, red, or purple spots to red areas of skin covered with small bumps.

If you find a tick still on your skin, follow these steps:

1. Remove it. Don’t touch the tick with your bare hands. Gently pull it straight out with tweezers. Don’t twist or squeeze it. Make sure you’ve removed the whole tick.
2. Save it in a sealed container. It helps to have a doctor look at or test your tick so you know if it was carrying diseases.
3. Wash your hands and the site of the bite. Once the tick is gone, use soap and water to make sure you’ve cleaned off any of the tick’s saliva.

It’s important to start treatment for diseases from ticks as soon as possible. If your tick bite is infected or you’ve gotten a disease from it, your doctor may prescribe antibiotics to help get rid of the infection or disease.

Call or see your doctor if you:

• Can’t get the tick totally out
• Get a rash (Even if the rash goes away, that doesn’t mean the disease is gone.)
• Have any flu-like symptoms, with or without a rash
• See red streaks, or yellow fluid oozing from the bite, meaning the bite is infected

Some people have more serious reactions to the bite itself. Go to the emergency room if you have:

• Anaphylaxis. This is a life-threatening reaction that needs medical care right away.
• Tick paralysis. If you have this, you will be unable to move. Paralysis usually goes away within 24 hours of removing the tick.

Call 911 or go to the emergency room if you have any of these symptoms:

• You can’t move your arms, legs, or part of your face.
• It’s hard to breathe.
• Your heart feels like it’s fluttering, skipping beats, or beating too hard or too fast.
• You have a severe headache.
• You feel weakness in your arms or legs.

You can lower your chance of tick bites by preparing yourself before you go outside and knowing what to look for once you’re back inside. Use these tick tips to protect yourself:

• Know where ticks lurk. You’re most likely to come into contact with ticks in long grassy, brush, or in wooded areas. You can even get them from brushing up against an animal that has one. Be on the lookout when you camp, garden, hunt, or spend time outdoors.
• Treat clothes with permethrin. Products with 0.5% permethrin help repel ticks. You put it on your clothes, shoes, and gear, not skin.
• Treat skin with insect repellents. If you know you’ll be in a tick-friendly area, use products with DEET, picaridin, IR3535, oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE), para-menthane-diol (PMD), or 2-undecanone on your skin to help make sure ticks and other bugs buzz off.
• Hike smart. When you’re outdoors, try to avoid places where you’ll rub against trees, plants, or grass. Walk in the center of trails.
• Do tick checks. Spend time looking for ticks on your body, pets, clothing, and gear after you come in from time outdoors. Use a mirror for hard-to-see areas of your body, and don’t forget to check your scalp.
• Wash off. Taking a shower within 2 hours of being outdoors can reduce your chance of getting a tick-borne disease. Running water and scrubbing with soap can help remove ticks from your body. Wash laundry on hot to rid your clothes of any hidden ticks.

Top Picks

Tick bite.

Tick-borne encephalitis and borreliosis. Symptoms, prevention and treatment

A carefree holiday in nature can be overshadowed by a tick bite.

In the hot weather of the spring-summer season, ticks wait for their prey, sitting in the grass or bushes. When a person appears, insects move from foliage to clothes, move along it in search of an open area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe body to which they can attach. To bite, ticks choose warm, moist areas of the skin where the blood vessels are not deep (neck, head, armpits, buttocks, the area between the shoulder blades, earlobes, calf muscles).

When bitten, ticks inject an anesthetic into the skin of the victim, so this goes unnoticed.

After saturation, the males quickly fall off the person, and the females can stay on their prey for several more days, having managed to lay up to 2 thousand eggs and increase to 10 mm in diameter.

Attention! Very often, ticks are carriers of such dangerous diseases as systemic borreliosis and tick-borne viral encephalitis!

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90 032 Symptoms of encephalitis

Tick-borne encephalitis is a seasonal viral disease. Encephalitis enters the human body after the bite of an infected tick or when drinking milk from infected cows or goats.

On average, clinical signs of the disease appear one month after the encephalitic tick bite.

Depending on the manifestation of symptoms, tick-borne encephalitis develops in 3 forms:

• focal form – observed in 20% of patients;
• febrile form – occurs in 50% of patients;
• meningeal form – in 30%.

With focal form of tick-borne encephalitis (the most severe form of the disease), the infection penetrates into the substance of the spinal cord and brain. The following signs of a tick bite are observed: chills, convulsions, a strong increase in temperature (above 40 degrees), the appearance of lethargy and drowsiness.

Depending on which part of the brain or spinal cord is affected, symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, cardiac and respiratory disorders, paralysis and paresis of the muscles of the shoulder and neck, impaired voluntary movements, etc. may be present.

Febrile encephalitis lasts up to 10 days. The disease is undulating in nature, then subsiding, then reappearing in the form of a fever. But weakness, palpitations and sweating persist for a long time.

Menigeal shape . With this form of the disease, inflammation of the membranes of the spinal cord and brain occurs. Within 2 weeks, the patient has a severe headache (in which pills do not help), neck muscle tension, vomiting, fever, fever.

Systemic tick-borne borreliosis (or Lyme disease)

Lyme disease was first identified in the US city of Lyme in 1975.

Borreliosis agent – the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, which belongs to the spirochetes. The causative agent of the disease enters the cells of the body and remains dormant for 10 years. This explains the chronic nature of the disease. A patient with borreliosis is not contagious for others, since the infection is transmitted to a person only through a tick bite.

Symptoms of borreliosis

The disease begins 1-2 weeks after infection. In its development, the disease goes through 3 stages. Moreover, stages 1-2 are considered early, and stage 3 is chronic.

Stage 1 borreliosis lasts about a month. Signs of a tick bite resemble acute respiratory infections. A person has a fever, general malaise, body aches, muscle pain and weakness appear.

The main symptom of stage 1 is the appearance near the bite of a round red spot (erythema) with a diameter of 15-20 cm. Over time, the spot may increase in size.

Stage 2 disease lasts for 6 months. Skin lesions in the form of ring-shaped elements, urticaria are characteristic.

Infection spreads throughout the body through the blood and lymph circulation, resulting in damage to the nervous system, joints or heart.

With inflammation of the cardiovascular system, severe arrhythmias, pericarditis and myocarditis (dizziness, palpitations, chest pain and shortness of breath) are observed. There may also be a decrease in sensitivity.

Stage 3 borreliosis . The disease becomes chronic. The consequences of borreliosis are heart disease, severe inflammation of the joints, combined with extensive damage to the nervous system.

If a disease such as borreliosis is left untreated, it can lead to disability and even death.

With the correct diagnosis of borreliosis and adequate antibiotic therapy, there is a chance for recovery.

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First Aid in case of a tick bite

Immediately after a tick bite, try to go to the nearest emergency room. A qualified doctor will quickly and skillfully save you from an insect.

In specialized hospitals, if necessary, according to indications, emergency prevention of tick-borne encephalitis is carried out by administering immunoglobulin or another antiviral drug in the first three days after a tick bite. In order to prevent tick-borne borreliosis, a course of antibiotic treatment is carried out.

If the visit to the doctor is delayed for any reason, you can try to remove it yourself. However, it often happens that during self-extraction, the insect breaks in half, and the head remains in the wound.

It is necessary, by making counterclockwise movements, to “twist” the insect out of the skin. Keep the tick as close to the skin as possible to prevent tearing of the abdomen. In this case, the fingers must be wrapped with a bandage or gauze.

You can try to remove the tick with a thread: wrap the proboscis of the tick as close to the skin as possible and, performing swinging movements, slowly pull the insect out.

After the manipulations, the bite site must be treated with a solution of iodine or alcohol. The tick must be closed in a vessel with a tightly screwed lid and brought to the laboratory for examination for the presence of the borreliosis virus and tick-borne encephalitis.

What you need to know about a tick bite?

Even if you manage to get rid of a tick, pay attention to changes in your health. If you have a fever, a change in blood pressure or severe headaches, you must urgently make an appointment with an infectious disease specialist, take a blood test for tick-borne borreliosis and encephalitis.

In some cases, you may need to consult a cardiologist, neurologist, general practitioner, rheumatologist, infectious disease specialist.

The material was prepared with the participation of a specialist:

• Kirichenko Alexey Viktorovich

  Traumatologist, orthopedist

  Second qualification category

Tick bite: what to do? (Sergiev Posad)

What should I do if bitten by a tick?

ATTENTION: Online consultations of doctors are available (more than 18 specialties).

A tick bite is an unpleasant situation that can lead to significant health consequences in the form of deadly complications.

The activity of parasites in nature increases in the warm season, and they can imperceptibly harm a person. Arthropods live mainly on trees, but they can also be on bushes and in the grass – they are able to adapt to different conditions.

Between the bite and the first symptoms of a lesion, a sufficiently long period of time usually passes, and the pathogens of neuroinfections have time to penetrate into the bloodstream, causing a number of irreversible changes.

The likelihood of interaction with these blood-sucking parasites makes people panic, but you should not worry without a reason – a tick bite does not mean an obligatory infection. It is important to know the precautions, as well as the diagnostic algorithm for recognizing a bite, and the immediate procedure for detecting a parasite. Early detection of the tick and timely initiation of treatment determine the success of therapeutic measures, while diagnosis in the later stages leads to difficulty in choosing a treatment, irreversible dysfunction of the central nervous system, or transition to a chronic form. It is also necessary to evaluate the benefits of vaccination and determine the feasibility of its implementation.

Why are ticks dangerous?

Tick-borne encephalitis and borreliosis (Lyme disease) are the main diseases that ticks can carry. This list also includes a number of other infections of the peripheral nervous system and brain. Tick-borne encephalitis is a serious disease with damage to various parts of the nervous structures, which can lead to irreversible changes in the form of paralysis or even death. Borreliosis is also characterized by a complex disorder of the nervous, cardiovascular, and musculoskeletal systems. Parasites can become carriers of pathogens of hemorrhagic vasculitis – an acute viral disease in which the circulatory system is affected, causing serious complications in the form of internal bleeding.

Signs of pathology after a bite

Careful examination reveals a suspicious area of ​​redness on the skin of exposed parts of the body – the arthropod is not able to get through clothes. Initially, you may not notice the parasite, especially if it is in the hair. Local immunity initiates the appearance of hyperreactivity – a rounded spot up to 10-20 cm in diameter, which can increase. Also, a characteristic sign of infection with borreliosis is the formation of a clearly defined contour of red color, which may eventually acquire a blue-white tint. A few weeks later, a crust with cicatricial changes forms at the site where the tick has bitten.

Immediately after the discovery of an arthropod on the skin, it is necessary to establish the stage of its development – the adult form is distinguished by the presence of four pairs of legs, and the nymph larva has only three pairs. It has been studied that the female needs more time to saturate with blood, and an adult can feed for several days.

Timely detection of the parasite at the stage of suction avoids a bite, however, in case of biting through the skin, it is necessary to definitely consult a doctor for observation during the incubation period of possible diseases. This period can take up to two months – the characteristics of the human blood-brain barrier determine the rate of spread of pathogenic viruses or bacteria and the appearance of characteristic symptoms.

The consequences of a tick bite and signs of infection vary depending on the form of the disease and the reaction of the body, but most often appear:

• characteristic swelling and bright redness at the site of contact with the tick;
• fever;
• chills;
• general deterioration of health;
• lethargy, drowsiness;
• fatigue;
• attacks of nausea;
• photophobia – an unpleasant reaction to bright daylight or artificial light;
• various rashes in the form of spots, nodules, pustules;
• shortness of breath – shortness of breath with mild exertion;
• feeling of difficulty in moving and aching in the joints;
• mood changes, emotional instability;
• increased anxiety;
• possible changes in the perception of reality in the form of hallucinations.

Initially, the symptoms of a tick bite may be mild, the skin may look without visual changes, and the signs increase later. A vivid clinical picture is typical for children, elderly patients, as well as people with chronic diseases that adversely affect immune function.

Ordinary people may not feel the signs of a tick bite at first – neuroinfections that are carried by ticks develop rather slowly. Often the progression of the disease is accompanied by fever, increased heart rate, inflammation of the lymph nodes, skin rash, itching in the place where the tick bit.

Also, often an arthropod bite causes a relatively harmless allergic reaction that has nothing to do with a serious endemic disease. It is important to consult a doctor for differential diagnosis of conditions. An allergy to a tick bite is accompanied by a bright local reaction on the skin, nasal congestion, tearing, and redness of the eyes.

Tick-borne encephalitis has a number of characteristic symptoms that are dangerous to health and even life. The onset of the disease may resemble the flu – fever, chills, aching joints and muscles appear. Deterioration of the cardiovascular system leads to interruptions in the work of the heart, arrhythmia, shortness of breath. Often patients complain of changes in the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract – nausea and vomiting, lack of appetite, loosening of the stool.

Neurological complaints may begin – episodes of changes in consciousness up to epileptic seizures. Despite the fact that different microorganisms become the causative agents of diseases, the alarming symptoms in pathologies are similar.

Consequences of non-intervention

The lack of a timely response to a tick bite can lead to the progression of the disease – a neuroinfection develops, which often leads to paralysis, meningitis, deadly complications and disabling consequences. It is important to know how dangerous a tick bite is for a person in order to respond to the problem in time.

Do-it-yourself tick removal

It is necessary to follow all the principles of the removal technique – it is necessary to remove the arthropod completely in a living state in order to maintain the possibility of diagnosing for the presence of the virus.

The classic version involves the use of tweezers as the main tool for extracting the arthropod parasite. A full-fledged reliable girth of the body prevents the main complication of manipulation – the preservation of the head of the tick in the thickness of the human skin. You should rotate his body clockwise around the axis – this avoids sudden movements in order to safely remove the whole tick. There is also a method using sewing thread – the knot is attached to the tick, and twisting is done by rotating the thread.

Contrary to popular belief, the use of oily solutions only complicates the procedure, while making it impossible to analyze the parasite for pathogenic viruses or bacteria.

If, after an attempted removal, a trace remains on the skin in the form of a dark dot, this may indicate that the arthropod’s head was not removed. You should wipe the bite site with alcohol, and then remove the remnants of the parasite.

You can also use iodine or another effective antiseptic to treat the skin. After completing the manipulations, the removed tick must be stored in a glass container with a cotton pad moistened with water. The preservation of the parasite will determine the danger of ticks to humans in the area.

However, it is better to entrust this task to specialists – experienced medical workers know how to quickly and correctly get rid of a tick, then they immediately deliver the material for research to the laboratory.

Non-specific prevention of tick bites

Preventive measures must be taken when traveling to endemic zones and disadvantaged forest-steppe regions with a high risk of infection from the parasite.

The main points to reduce the likelihood of tick bites:

• vaccination before traveling to forest-steppe zones;
• maximum coverage of all parts of the body with clothing, hats, closed shoes;
• avoiding passing under trees and thick bushes;
• thorough examination of all family members for bites, including the scalp;
• treatment with special external agents that repel insects.

Vaccination against tick-borne encephalitis in the Paracelsus clinic

Doctors of the Paracelsus multidisciplinary medical clinic recommend that all people at risk be vaccinated against tick-borne encephalitis – people who live in endemic areas or are going to come to such areas are vaccinated. The Ministry of Health of Russia has determined the list of vaccines that are allowed for vaccination, some of them are produced by domestic companies, and several items are supplied from other countries.

The scheme of application of the vaccine:

• consultation with a general practitioner and determination of the safety of vaccination;
• the first stage of the introduction of the vaccine on a certain day;
• revaccination – after 1-2 months according to the scheme;
• the third vaccination – 12 months after the second stage of the drug administration.

Vaccination can provide a reliable protective effect to prevent infection of the nervous system and the development of complications, so this method of prevention is necessary for everyone who is more susceptible to infection by ticks.

Paracelsus offers vaccination with the domestic vaccine EnceVir, which is effective against common strains of the virus that ticks carry. The Paracelsus team cares about the health of its clients, therefore, before the vaccination, everyone needs to undergo an examination by a therapist and some additional diagnostic methods to assess their general health, possible contraindications and the risk of developing complications of the vaccination.

Treatment at the Paracelsus Center

Timely access to a doctor is the key to preventing severe damage to the nervous system and internal organs, preventing serious complications and minimizing the risk of death.

Only in the conditions of a medical institution can all conditions be provided for the rapid and safe extraction of parasites with subsequent analysis of the tick, as well as a comprehensive diagnosis of the victim for the transmission of infections.

Paracelsus Medical Center is a complex clinic, which is attended by specialists from various fields of medicine. Infectionists and parasitologists of our institution know how to properly remove a tick, as well as treat the bite site. The study of a tick in order to determine the carriage of pathogens of neuroinfections is necessary to understand the further tactics of managing a victim of a bite, since changes that are noticeable during diagnosis may not yet develop in his body.

Further penetration of microorganisms into the human bloodstream causes the formation of specific antibodies that can be detected by laboratory blood tests.

Even if a long period has passed after the moment of the bite, and complaints have appeared recently, it is better to consult a doctor to exclude dangerous diagnoses and take the appropriate tests.

Also, a tick bite can cause allergic reactions, become inflamed and complicated by local infectious processes. In all such cases, a doctor’s examination is necessary with the further appointment of appropriate treatment. The use of antihistamines and local ointments quickly returns the quality of life.