Distribution map of encephalitic ticks. Tick-borne encephalitis - endemic areas of distribution
And it's good if the attack of this arthropod did without consequences. But it often happens that a person becomes infected with a serious illness, so ticks are treated with caution. And if you suddenly happen to become a victim of these insects, you need to urgently consult a doctor. It is important to know the habitats of ticks, as well as ways to protect against them.
Bloodsuckers in nature
In the world fauna there are at least 40 thousand species of ticks, among which there are poorly studied ones, as well as new groups appear. Therefore, they belong to the most diverse families of arthropods that have ever lived on our planet.
Why are arthropod bites dangerous?
Tick-borne typhus;
Tularemia;
Q fever;
relapsing tick-borne typhus;
Ehrlichiosis;
Hemorrhagic fever.
Among the carriers of these diseases, two species and the European forest species are of particular epidemiological importance. They are giants among the whole variety of types.
When mites appear
The beginning of the activity of adults is observed when the soil warms up to 5-7 degrees Celsius, basically this period falls at the beginning or middle of April, depending on the weather. The number of ticks begins to increase rapidly and reaches a maximum by the end of May, remaining high until the middle - end of June. Again, depending on weather conditions. Reserve nutrients by that time they are depleted, and ticks begin to die out abruptly. But still, some individuals can be found even until the end of September.
How ticks attack
When the prey approaches, the ticks assume a waiting position: since the organs of smell are located on the front paws, they stretch them out and drive them from side to side, determining the direction of the smell source. At the moment when a person or animal passes by, bloodsuckers spread their front legs, equipped with claws and suckers, and cling to the victim.
What happens after the attack
When bitten, ticks inject an anesthetic. Therefore, the victim may not even feel that she was attacked.
Having found a place to feed, ticks cut through the skin with their proboscises and, having reached the blood vessels, begin to suck blood. The first portion of saliva, which glues the mouthparts to the skin, and the teeth on the proboscis directed backwards help to securely gain a foothold in the chosen position.
Females absorb blood for about 6 days, while males need much less time to feed. At the same time, the volume of ticks increases to the size of the phalanx of the little finger, and the weight becomes a hundred times greater than it was before suction.
What should I do if bitten by a tick?
Overwintered ticks can hide in dry foliage and grass. After hibernation, they need food, so the beginning of spring is the time to look for a victim. Ticks cling to all warm-blooded creatures that they meet on their way, these are mice, hedgehogs, hares, cats, dogs, which spread ticks even more throughout the regions of Russia. If you are going to a dacha or live outside the city, be sure to carry out tick prevention in your area - remove dry branches, leaves and grass, then do by special means, such as Tsifox, Ram, Sipaz Super, Bytex, Acarocide, Breeze, Akaritox.
Wear a headdress. Although ticks rarely rise to a height of more than one and a half meters and cannot fly, it is better to protect yourself, because you can bend down for the first flower and pick up a pest from the nearest branch right into your hair. Treat your clothes with a tick spray, since there is a very large selection of them in stores. Do not spray chemicals intended for clothing, on the skin!
In what areas of the Moscow region in 2018 are ticks the most active?
The first tick bites in 2018 were recorded in March in Solnechnogorsk, Lukhovitsk, Shakhovsky and Zaraisky districts. There were no cases of infection with encephalitis or borreliosis. Ticks in the Moscow region rarely carry encephalitis, mainly they carry Lyme disease and tularemia. If you plan to travel to a potentially encephalitis-prone area, go. Last year, more than a thousand people voluntarily underwent such a procedure and secured themselves in advance.
As of September 1 last year, vaccinated against tick-borne encephalitis 5186 people, including children 1350 .
In almost all areas of the Moscow region, there is a threat of infection with borreliosis () from a bite. The infection map of the Moscow Region warns that in 2018 the most dangerous areas are: Taldomsky, Dmitrovsky, Istrinsky, Voskresensky, Volokolamsky, Shatursky, Lukhovitsky, Yegoryevsky, Domodedovsky, Ramensky, Noginsky, Pavlovo-Posadsky, Ozersky, Orekhovo-Zeuvsky, Lyubertsy, Ruzsky, Naro-Fominsky, Ruzsky, Pushkinsky, Kolomna, Serpukhov, Stupinsky, Solnechnogorsky, Khimki, Lotoshinsky, Klinsky, Schelkovsky, Mytishchi, Krasnogorsky.
As of September 1, 2017, medical organizations in Moscow and the region registered 9521 cases of sucking ticks, including children - 2792 .
The most disadvantaged areas this moment: Dmitrovsky, Taldomsky, Shatursky, Kolomna, Noginsky, Orekhovo-Zuevsky, Pavlovo-Posadsky, Balashikhinsky.
Although Moscow parks are treated against ticks, there is still a risk of encountering a tick in a city park or public garden. After the walk, check yourself and your pets. Ticks like to stick to a person in the back of the head, neck, axillary and inguinal regions.
The number of people bitten is growing every day. Last year, the number of people infected with encephalitis in the Moscow region was about 400 people. In 2016, more than 500,000 people were officially registered as being bitten by ticks.
At the end of August 2017, appeals to emergency rooms and other medical institutions regarding tick bites were recorded in the following disadvantaged tick-borne areas:
- Ramensky district - 485
- Dmitrovsky district - 465
- Kolomna - 432
- Lyubertsy - 424
- Serpukhov district - 423
- Balashikha - 412
- Noginsk district - 368
- Orekhovo-Zuevsky district - 310
- Naro-Fominsky district - 299
- Sergiev Posad district - 274
- in other municipalities, between 20 and 200 cases were registered.
What should I do if bitten by a tick?
If you are bitten by either the Moscow region or any other region, first of all carefully remove it. If you have not been vaccinated, save the tick for further transmission to research. In Moscow, this point is located at Grafsky pereulok 4, building 2, 3, 4 - Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology in Moscow. If you receive a positive result from the laboratory, immediately contact a specialized medical institution in your area for treatment.
If you can't take the tick for lab samples, or you haven't saved it, get your antibodies tested two to four weeks after the bite.
As soon as it begins to warm up, everyone remembers such spring troubles as encephalitis mites. And for good reason, because infection with this disease can even lead to death or disability.
In order not to confuse them with other insects, you need to know how they look (see photo). The size of an adult tick ranges from 2.5 to 5.0 mm in a hungry state. A well-fed tick can reach 7-10 mm, some species are larger - 11 mm.
The most aggressive are females, their abdomen is more flexible to accommodate as much blood as possible. Males are smaller, they cling with less force and sit for a short time - about an hour.
Ticks are well oriented with the help of smell - they can smell the victim for 10 m. The color of the abdomen of the ixodid tick is most often red or bright brown, the head, paws and breast are black. In total, the bloodsucker has four pairs of legs, and sharp hooks are located at the ends, with the help of which they firmly grasp prey.
Encephalitic regions and regions.
There is a special map of encephalitis ticks for 2017. It contains an approximate description of the areas and areas of encephalitis. Green color- more or less safe areas, brown - multiple cases of infection.
Click on the picture to enlarge
In the Moscow region, you should be wary of Kolomna, Shatursky, Solnechnogorsk, Klinsky, Khimki, Domodedovo, Lyubertsy, Yegoryevsky, Voskresensky, Mytishchi, Pushkinsky, Serpukhovsky, Ozersky, Schelkovsky, Noginsky, Lukhovitsky, Volokolamsky, Taldomsky, Istrinsky districts, as well as cities such as Zheleznodorozhny , Balashikha, Ivanteevka, Dzerzhinsky, Korolev, Lobnya, Fryazino.
Simferopol, Bakhchisaray, Alushta, Belogorsky, Kirovsky, Krasnogvardeysky, forests of such cities as Simferopol, Yalta and Alushta have long been considered the most dangerous areas. As well as in other areas, here bloodsuckers prefer shaded moist forests, tall grass along the paths, deadwood.
To protect yourself, you need to be vaccinated against bloodsuckers in a month and a half, which is carried out in city clinics.
Why is a tick bite so dangerous?
Everyone knows that ticks should be feared by both a child and an adult, but not everyone is aware of their ability to be a carrier of not only viral encephalitis. What else is dangerous this little bloodsucker?
There are many other dangerous diseases that a tick can cause. Therefore, when bitten by a bloodsucker, you need to be prepared for anything, it is better to visit a doctor and follow his recommendations so as not to start the disease or not know about it at all.
Consider the most common diseases that ixodid ticks can infect you with.
To find out which ticks are encephalitic, you need to send a live individual that has bitten you for research or donate blood. But you need to go for an examination only a week after the tick bite.
This is due to the fact that within a week and a half there will be no symptoms of encephalitis and its traces in the blood. After ten days, you can come to the clinic and donate blood not only for this virus, but also for other diseases.
The first signs of illness are a bit like a cold. The temperature rises sharply, the joints and muscles ache, the head starts to hurt. The great danger of the disease is that the virus affects the spinal cord and brain, so the consequences of a bite in people can be different and serious.
Dizziness is also characteristic, there is a general deterioration in the condition. There may be convulsions of the body, arms and legs, paralyze the muscles of the neck. Because of this virus, a person can remain disabled or die.
That is why at the first symptoms it is necessary to immediately call a doctor and begin treatment. Self-medication is strictly not recommended.
2. Typhus (tick-borne rickettsiosis) The main signs of infection are rash and fever. Symptoms are detected 5-7 days after contact with the arachnid in the form of headache, high fever, weakness, chills, muscle pain.
3. Borreliosis - traces of infection appear only a month after the bite. The bite site looks like a red spot with pronounced borders. The infection affects the nervous and cardiovascular systems, which can lead to subsequent disability. The general condition of the patient is similar to SARS.
4. Ehrlichiosis - the disease can be recognized after an incubation period of 4 to 22 days. The nervous system and liver suffer. It shows itself as fever, headache, intoxication.
5. Tularemia - the skin is affected, The lymph nodes, eyes, lungs. State - heat, intoxication. May appear a week or a month after exposure.
6. Relapsing fever- characterized by chills, bouts of fever, high fever, intoxication. May lead to serious consequences.
7. Q-fever - can be determined within a month. The patient's condition: high, fever, chills, sleep disturbance, sweating, weakness, headache, which is most pronounced in the eye area.
How to protect yourself and your loved ones?
Before you go to the country, to the forest or to barbecue, be sure to read how to protect yourself from ticks. After all, it is better to prevent troubles than to deal with them later.
But it makes no sense to put an injection in the season - it will not help you in any way, because vaccinations are done one and a half months before the start of the peak appearance of bloodsuckers.
So, you still decided to go on an adventure - what needs to be done?
1. Choosing a place. Bloodsuckers prefer to live in shady, damp areas, so you need to choose a location for a picnic on a sunny, dry lawn.
Most bloodsuckers live in tall grass and bushes, so you need to be careful in such spaces.
Usually representatives of this class of arachnids sit on the tip of the grass and wait for warm-blooded passing by. It can be a running hare or a person calmly picking berries.
Since ticks crawl from the grass onto the fabric, and then slowly rise up and look for a softer and gentler place on the skin, it is necessary to close the passage for them, starting from the very bottom.
It is best to wear high boots, but if they are not available, you need shoes that fit well to your feet, high socks, into which you need to carefully tuck your pants. To eliminate unnecessary risk, you can even tie this case with ropes.
Do the same with the sleeves. First, they must be long. Secondly, we will need gloves in which to fill the sleeves. AT outerwear preference should be given to bologna fabric, because the hooks at the ends of the legs of the ticks will not be able to catch on it.
3. Remedies for bloodsuckers. Before going for mushrooms or on a picnic, do not forget. The packaging must indicate that the drug will protect you from ticks.
4. And the very last need is to check yourself and your loved ones. This means that every half an hour or an hour you need to carefully examine each other from head to toe in order to prevent a sudden attack.
If you responsibly approach the implementation of at least part of these recommendations, you can avoid the manipulations that will be described in the next paragraph.
If there is a clinic nearby, it is best to go there and seek help. In the hospital, the tick will be quickly removed and immediately sent for examination to find out if it contains a virus of any disease.
Let's see how to independently rescue yourself or your loved ones from the jaws of a small monster.
2. You can also remove the bloodsucker with tweezers, but in no case should you press. You need to grab the arachnid as close to the proboscis as possible, pull it up a little and start slowly twisting it counterclockwise (because they bite most often clockwise).
3. Special tools- are sold in pharmacies and online stores that are designed specifically for twisting ticks from the skin of people or animals. One of them, for example, has a similar appearance to a small nail puller.
These methods can also be used to remove ticks from cats and dogs. And to protect pets from bites, use flea and tick repellant.
If you have heard that you can remove a tick from the body with a syringe, then most likely you will not succeed. In this video, they just conducted an experiment and proved that this is impossible!
If the tick is not completely pulled out - the proboscis or head may remain - you need to ignite the needle on the fire and try to pull it out like a splinter. It is impossible to leave the remains of an arachnid, because an infection may be introduced, the wound will begin to fester.
And here the usual advice will not help, how to crush, drown, go on a hunger strike. The ixodid red tick can only be burned. You can’t even flush it down the toilet or sink, as in horror films, it will get out of there and begin to take revenge. Just burn it and make sure you die.
If it is possible to send a bloodsucker for study, you need to place the arachnid in a small jar, be sure to put a piece there wet cotton or damp paper so that the tick survives transport.
You should go to the right institution in ten days, it is after such an amount of time that the disease shows its signs.
Frightening statistics
Over the past week, the number of people who applied to medical institutions due to tick bites has increased from 31 to 58 thousand people. A year ago, this figure was 1.6 times higher. This was told in Rospotrebnadzor, writes TASS. In mid-March, the agency began weekly monitoring of the spread of viral encephalitis and other tick-borne infections. During warm spring days, the number of Russians who turned to doctors about tick bites grew rapidly: on April 28, about 12.5 thousand people complained about the bites, and by May 5 their number exceeded 30 thousand, and by May 12 - 58 thousand.
Rospotrebnadzor conducts (so-called acaricidal) treatments aimed at the destruction of ticks. The department noted that to date, more than 105 thousand hectares have been processed.
"At the same time, more than 120,000 hectares are planned for processing, which is 30 percent more than last year," the ministry's press service said.
According to statistics, the first peak of tick activity in the metropolitan region is attributed to April-June, however, in the spring of 2017, ticks “woke up” earlier, starting to manifest themselves from the second decade of March, writes the 360 Podmoskovye website. In Moscow, large parks, recreation areas and cemeteries are treated annually as part of prevention.
Treatment of the area from ticks is carried out in different regions countries. For example, in Kemerovo this year it is planned to process more than 1.5 million square meters green areas, and in Chelyabinsk - 80 public recreation facilities with total area 226 hectares. more than 200 hectares of land are planned to be treated against ticks.
Danger
Ticks are carriers of dangerous infectious diseases: tick-borne borreliosis, tick-borne viral encephalitis, ehrlichiosis, Crimean hemorrhagic fever, tularemia, recurrent tick-borne typhus, Tsutsugamushi fever, Astrakhan spotted fever and many others. At the same time, encephalitis is the most famous, but far from the most common in central region Russia with a disease. Much more common are cases of tick-borne borreliosis or Lyme disease. The infection is very insidious, it may not appear for years. In severe cases, borreliosis can become chronic, lead to damage to internal organs, nervous system, joints and heart. As of May 12, 2017, at least six people, including a child, have been infected with Lyme disease after being bitten by ticks.
Ticks found in the Moscow region, as a rule, are not carriers of encephalitis, in this region they are carriers of just borreliosis. Encephalitis is carried by ticks that live in Altai, in Western and Eastern Siberia. Meanwhile, on April 25, 2017, Russian scientists isolated strains of a new type of borreliosis. Alexander Platonov, head of the laboratory of natural focal infections of the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of Rospotrebnadzor, said in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper that the new kind tick-borne borreliosis in its symptoms is similar to tick-borne encephalitis.
A new subtype of borreliosis is transmitted through the bacteria Borrelia Miyamotoi, which actively multiply in the salivary glands of the tick. Symptoms are immediately visible and resemble acute respiratory infections, poisoning or influenza: a high temperature of 40-41 degrees, nausea, vomiting, headaches and pain in muscles and joints. The disease can only be detected using PCR tests. As Platonov noted, in Russia, especially in Siberia, up to ten percent of all ticks are infected with a new causative agent of borreliosis.
The insidiousness of borreliosis is that there are no vaccinations against it. The only way to protect yourself is to minimize the risk of bloodsucking on the human body, which is especially important when going out into nature, the Moscow 24 TV channel reports.
Protect yourself and loved ones
A number of simple rules will help not to become a victim of ticks. First, there are vaccines for viral encephalitis. Vaccinations can be done in clinics, medical centers and research institutes. At medical institution where you plan to get vaccinated, there must be a license. In some of them, vaccinations can be done free of charge. A list of institutions can be found on the Rospotrebnadzor website. It is also necessary to remember that vaccinations must be done in advance, and for the formation of stable immunity - for several years and at strictly defined intervals. For detailed instructions for vaccination, you should consult a doctor.