How to protect yourself and your child from tick bites? How to get the tick out of the body, what medications to take after that, and should the tick be taken for analysis in the laboratory?
Despite the vagaries of the weather, tick season is now in full swing. In social networks, every now and then you come across posts warning that someone picked up a parasite in the country, in a park or on a picnic in the forest. The most difficult thing is to protect a child from a tick. Due to their short stature, babies automatically become ideal prey for bloodsuckers, who usually attack their prey at a height of 40-50 cm. Everyone knows that ticks can carry very dangerous diseases such as tick-borne encephalitis and borreliosis. Therefore, the most common question after contact with this parasite is whether it is necessary to urgently take any medications and take the tick for analysis in a laboratory to make sure that it is not infected. This question is fully answered by the pediatrician Sergey Butriy and pediatric orthopedist Vasily Perebailov.
How to protect yourself and your baby from tick bites
Dress properly for a walk / istockphoto.com
Tick season is usually in May and June. This year, despite the rains and cool windy weather, they feel more than comfortable. These parasites are most active at temperatures from +10 to +20 degrees. And this is exactly the temperature regime that (according to forecasters) in Ukraine will hold for at least another two or three weeks. To protect yourself and children from bloodsucker bites, you need to adhere to very simple rules:
- avoiding areas where the risk of encountering a tick is potentially high (tall grass, bushes and dense undergrowth)
- dress light-colored clothes with long sleeves and legswhich covers the body as much as possible
- wear a hat for children that covers the ears and neck (panama, cap or bandana with neck protection)
- use repellents according to the age of the child
- carefully examine all family members after a walk
These measures are often enough to protect yourself from an unpleasant meeting with a high degree of probability. However, it also happens that contact could not be avoided: in nature or upon returning home, you find a bloodsucker tightly sucked on the body. In this case, the main thing is not to panic and not make typical mistakes. In no case should you grab the tick with your fingers and try to pull it out of the body. Do not water it with vegetable oil, vinegar, or alcohol. Do not squeeze it out of the body like a splinter and, moreover, do not twist it in different directions.
What to do if you find a tick on your body
The tick must be removed without damaging its abdomen and head / istockphoto.com
Medically speaking, the sooner you remove the tick from your body, the better. If the bloodsucker is infected, then the infection enters the bloodstream gradually, as he gets drunk. Therefore, it is better not to delay the extraction of the parasite to the emergency room and do it yourself. The main rule here: the tick must be completely removed without damaging the body and without tearing off the head.
“As soon as you find a tick on your body, you need to remove it without delay,” emphasizes Sergei Butriy. - This can be done using thin tweezers that do not press on the abdomen of the tick, thread or a special device (lasso pen or in other words, a tick wrench). All other methods of removing the tick (picking out with a needle, sprinkling with an antiseptic or any other liquid) are ineffective and even increase the risk of infection. After the tick is removed, it must be crushed or burned on a match fire so that it does not run away and bite you again. Then you need to wash the bite site with soap and treat it with any antiseptic. "
In order to prevent infection, Sergei Butriy recommends taking an antibiotic once: doxycycline in a dosage according to age and weight. However, this can be done only if there are no contraindications to it and after prior consultation with a doctor. After that, for a month, you need to observe the symptoms, which may indicate that the tick was still infected. For encephalitis, this is an increase in temperature without signs of SARS, headache and photophobia. For borreliosis, erythema migrans (a red spot at the site of a tick bite that grows in size with discoloration in the center) and joint pain. When these symptoms appear, you urgently need to run to an infectious disease specialist, get tested and discuss a treatment plan.
Do I need to take a tick for analysis after a bite?
Tick testing won't do any good / istockphoto.com
Nowhere in the world is there such a practice to donate a tick after a bite for tests. This can only be done for epidemiological purposes: to collect statistics in those regions where there are many encephalitis ticks. In all other cases, the analysis of a tick does not make sense, experts say. First, because there is no effective “emergency prevention” of tick-borne diseases. Secondly, because the result of the analysis will not in any way affect the tactics of treatment in the event of symptoms of the disease.
“If a person is vaccinated against tick-borne encephalitis, he is reliably protected from this infection, and may not worry about the infection of the tick,” explains Vasily Perebailov. - If there is no vaccination, and the tick was a carrier of the infection: there is still no post-exposure prophylaxis that can prevent infection with one hundred percent probability. Immunoglobulin injections, which in this case are done in post-Soviet countries, do not show effectiveness, and are not used anywhere in the world. "
Even if the tick was a carrier of the virus, a person will still not be treated until the first symptoms appear, emphasizes Vasily Perebailov. Symptoms may not appear (infection will not happen), but so many nerve cells will go away in two months that then you will have to consult a psychologist.
“As for borreliosis, there are clear time criteria,” the expert continues. - If the tick was in the sucked state for less than 36 hours, the chance of human infection tends to zero, even if the tick itself was a carrier of the virus. If the tick sucked a person for more than 36 hours, you need to drink the antibiotic doxycycline (dosage and the frequency of admission is agreed with the doctor) and then just observe your body for appearances unwanted symptoms. That is, in this case, the analysis of the tick also will not affect either the tactics of preventive measures or the treatment, if the disease does manifest itself. "
Any other infections that ticks can carry (anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, piroplasmosis, bartonellosis, and everything else) also do not have any effective prevention methods. A person will be treated only when the first symptoms of infection appear.
You will also be interested in reading:
What to do if bitten by a tick: step by step instructions
Caution - ticks! 3 steps to respond quickly
Doctor Komarovsky told how to get the tick correctly and what to do next
