November 2022: How to Kill Vampire Ticks Instantly
Yes, ticks are vampires. They need blood to progress from larva to nymph to adult and then for females to lay eggs. They can drink so much blood in one meal that they increase their weight several hundred times. Once engorged, they release their mouth attachments and fall off the host and progress to their next life stage.Ticks, depending on the species, can have up to three different hosts during a lifetime. Their complicated mouthparts—the hypostome, chelicera, and palp—allow the tick to attach and feed on animals and humans.The mouth of a tick. (Photo by the National Institutes of Health)Like most insects, ticks pro...
Source: M2E Too! Mellick's Multimedia EduBlog - October 31, 2022 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
Be vigilant about bug spray
Ticks and mosquitoes don’t care about COVID-19 safety protocols. They don’t care that people are trying to squeeze out the last moments of this restrictive summer by getting outdoors, hiking, or just sitting on their decks at night and feeling something that’s close to normal.
COVID-19 has commanded our attention and caused people to adapt their behaviors to prevent one major health concern, but it doesn’t mean others have been eliminated. “Masks and social distancing will do nothing to protect you from what ticks and mosquitoes potentially carry,” says Dr. Todd Ellerin, director of infectious diseases and vice...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - August 7, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Steve Calechman Tags: Autoimmune diseases Prevention Safety Source Type: blogs
Tick-Borne Diseases of Norway
Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is one of eight zoonoses carried by ticks in Norway (the others are Anaplasmosis, Babesiosis, Louping ill, Lyme borreliosis, Relapsing fever, Rickettsial spotted fever and Tularemia). As displayed in the following graphs, rates of human TBE are considerably lower than those of other tick-borne diseases in Norway, and below TBE rates reported by neighboring countries. [1-3]
References:
Berger S. Infectious Diseases of Norway, 2019. 387 pages , 138 graphs , 858 references. Gideon e-books, https://www.gideononline.com/ebooks/country/infectious-diseases-of-norway/
Berger S. Ti...
Source: GIDEON blog - April 1, 2019 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Dr. Stephen Berger Tags: Ebooks Epidemiology Graphs ProMED Source Type: blogs
Ticked off: America ’s quiet epidemic of tickborne diseases
For most of us, springtime marks the return of life to a dreary landscape, bringing birdsong, trees in bud, and daffodils in bloom. But if you work for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the coming of spring means the return of nasty diseases spread by ticks and mosquitoes.
The killjoys at CDC celebrated the end of winter with a bummer of a paper showing that infections spread by ticks doubled in the United States from 2004 to 2016. (Tick populations have exploded in recent decades, perhaps due to climate change and loss of biodiversity.)
Lyme disease
The most common infection spread by ticks in the US i...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - May 25, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Health Infectious diseases Source Type: blogs
Tick- and Mosquito-borne Diseases: Trends in the United States
The following data are abstracted from Gideon and the Gideon e-book series. [1] Charts were created using an interactive tool driven by over 30,000 base graphs in the program. [2]
Chart 1 contrasts trends for reported incidence of Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF). Note that while rates of Lyme disease in 2016 are 15-fold those reported in 1987, those of RMSF increased by a factor of seven. The number of fatal cases for both diseases have remained similar in recent years (i.e., the relative case-fatality rate of Lyme disease has decreased)
Chart 2 summarizes incidence data for a variety of tick-bo...
Source: GIDEON blog - May 4, 2018 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Dr. Stephen Berger Tags: Ebooks Epidemiology Graphs ProMED Source Type: blogs
Ticks and the changing landscape of tick-borne illnesses
Ticks and the diseases they carry have long been recognized as health concerns, especially in the warmer months when ticks (and humans) are more active. Ticks wait on grass tips or shrubs to latch onto new hosts when they brush by. Most of the hosts are animals, but a few tick species do bite and feed on humans. While doing so, they can transmit bacteria and viruses through their saliva.
But here’s what’s changing:
Tick species are being found in a wider geographic range.
The number of case reports of tick-borne illnesses is increasing.
Scientists continue to identify new pathogens (bacteria and viruses that cause dis...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - August 11, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Wynne Armand, MD Tags: Health Infectious diseases Prevention Safety Travel health Source Type: blogs
Ticks and the changing landscape of tick borne illnesses
Ticks and the diseases they carry have long been recognized as health concerns, especially in the warmer months when ticks (and humans) are more active. Ticks wait on grass tips or shrubs to latch onto new hosts when they brush by. Most of the hosts are animals, but a few tick species do bite and feed on humans. While doing so, they can transmit bacteria and viruses through their saliva.
But here’s what’s changing:
Tick species are being found in a wider geographic range.
The number of case reports of tick-borne illnesses is increasing.
Scientists continue to identify new pathogens (bacteria and viruses that cause dis...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - August 11, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Wynne Armand, MD Tags: Health Infectious diseases Prevention Safety Travel health Source Type: blogs
Finding the tick in time could save you from Lyme!
“Doesn’t it typically happen during the summer?” asked a worried lady that had walked into my clinic in November with a growing circular rash on her wrist. She was referring, of course, to Lyme disease, that scourge of outdoor enthusiasts. While the peak season for Lyme disease is indeed summer, the ticks that transmit it are active March through December. And, while this may be off-season for the ticks, it is a good time to catch up on how to stay safe in the not-so-distant spring.
What is Lyme disease, and how do you treat it?
Lyme disease is caused by a bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi which is spread to peop...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - February 24, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Meera Sunder, MBBS, MRCOG Tags: Health Infectious diseases Prevention Source Type: blogs
Good bye, my love.
Two months ago, Dixie seemed to be feeling under the weather. She wasn't eating well, and seemed to have less energy. I took her to my vet and she was diagnosed with anaplasmosis. (a tick borne illness) She tested a "faint positive" right at the end of the testing window. The vet prescribed antibiotics and said that Dixie should feel better in a few days.A few days later, she wasn't doing any better. I brought her back to the vet and they did an X-ray to "rule out" anything more significant. The vet saw a shadow on her X-ray and sent it to the University of Minnesota vet hospital to have it read by a radiologist. The repor...
Source: Dam Diabetes - June 14, 2014 Category: Diabetes Source Type: blogs
Anaplasmosis in Germany
The following data on Anaplasmosis in Germany are abstracted from the Gideon e-book series. [1,2] (primary references available on request).
Prevalence surveys:
5.3% of rodents and 1% of Ixodes ricinus in Stuttgart (2008 publication)
3.2% of Ixodes ricinus adults and 2.3% of nymphs. 0.9% of infected ticks were found to carry Borrelia spp. (Hanover, 2011 publication)
61.8% of blood samples from European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus), 73.4% of associated Ixodes ricinus and 26.6% of Ixodes hexagonus (2007 to 2008)
3.2% of bird-feeding and 1.1% of rodent-feeding ticks in central Germany (2007)
1.4%...
Source: GIDEON blog - April 20, 2014 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Dr. Stephen Berger Tags: Ebooks Epidemiology ProMED anaplasmosis Germany Source Type: blogs
Lyme Disease
Pathophysiology of Lyme Disease
Lyme disease is an
1) infection with Borrelia burgdorferi via tick bite
2) previous thinking held tick vector was Ixodes but transmission is now thought by some experts to be possible with additional tick species
3) occurs in stage I and stage II days to weeks after infection and in stage III months to years after infection (usually with preceding latency period
Signs and Symptoms
Stage I
1) characteristic expanding annular rash with central clearing (“bull’s eye or “target” rash) that occurs in only 40% of infections
Stage II
2) multiple secondary annular skin lesio...
Source: Inside Surgery - March 19, 2013 Category: Surgeons Authors: Editor Tags: Infectious Disease babesia bulls eye rash coinfections deer tick erythema migrans hyperbaric ixodes target rash Source Type: blogs
