Tick bites

By Brian W. Donnelly, MD – AHN Pediatrics Northland

It’s summer time, and the beautiful summer weather provides us the

opportunity to get out of our houses and enjoy nature. As we picnic and play in the grass and hike in the woods, we often pay little attention to the little hitchhikers that can ride home on us and our pets. Let’s talk about ticks.

Ticks are arachnids. Arachnids are joint-legged invertebrates (arthropods) that have four pairs of legs, and two body regions, a cephalothorax and an abdomen. Spiders, scorpions, and mites are also arachnids. Ticks have a 4 cycle life stage: Egg, 6 legged larva, eight legged nymph, and adult. The cycle lasts about 2 years. After hatching, each stage requires a blood meal. Most ticks actually die because they aren’t successful in finding a host.

Ticks come to our attention because they try to attach themselves to our bodies or to the bodies of our pets. When ticks attach to a body, they are looking for a blood meal. Their strategy, once they have attached to an unsuspecting host, is to find a suitable place on that host to feed. They tend to seek the warmest places, which, for us, are often hidden areas, like the nape of the neck, the scalp, the groin or the armpit. They secrete an anesthetic in their saliva, so the entry through the skin and into the blood vessel is undetected. They can then suck the host’s blood for several days. Once finished, they detach and move on to their next life stage. Tics are most active during the warmer months, generally from April to August, but have been spotted during the cooler months too.

We are concerned about tick bites for a few reasons. To start with, most of us are not that generous about sharing our precious blood with arthropods (which includes insects), even if we are impressed with how deftly they can perform surgery on us. But the bigger reason we care is the chance that they happen to inject us with bacteria that can cause other diseases. Most tick bites are harmless, but some can cause humans a lot of misery.

Ixodes scapularis, which is commonly called the blacklegged tick (or deer tick), is known to spread Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme disease bacteria. Deer ticks are very common in this area. In other parts of the country, different ticks can transmit the Lyme disease bacteria. For example, Ixodes pacificus, or the western blacklegged tick, spreads B. burgdorferi on the Pacific coast.

Ixodes scapularis are infamous for being quite small. The adult tick is approximately the size of a sesame seed, while the nymph is roughly the size of a poppy seed. The tick that harbors dangerous bacteria can transmit them at any life stage, but nymphs and larvae are so small that the concern for them eluding our detection is greatly magnified. The only good news here is that the deer ticks must be attached for at least 36 hours to transmit the bacteria to us, so there is a window of opportunity to find and remove them.

If you find a deer tick, the best approach is to remove it with tweezers. Grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible, then pull it out with a slow, upward motion. Avoid twisting or squeezing the tick. Do not apply petroleum jelly, fingernail polish, or a hot match to the tick. If possible, save the tick