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The opinion is popular: if a person is bitten by a tick, you do not need to throw it away, but take it to the laboratory for testing in order to determine if the animal was contagious. We decided to check if this is so.
Annually in the season of spreading ticks in social networks flash Discussions whether it is necessary to attribute to the laboratory of arthropod that bites a person. Recommendations be sure to hand over the tick for testing is often placed on sites medical organizations, especially those that themselves Provide Similar services. Such adviсe can also be found in an interview with doctors in Media And on informational Portals. However, other institutions They saywhat to make a bitten tick tests completely Not necessarily.
During rest in nature in the warm season, insect bites are not uncommon. You can encounter ticks (They do not relate to insects - these are arthropods of spider -like). Their bites painlessTherefore, often it does not immediately manage to find a sucked tick and it can eat the blood of his victim up to several days. Most of these creatures are not poisonous in themselves, but they can be carriers of dangerous causative agents - viruses, bacteria, parasites, etc. There are more than 10,000 species of ticks, but from a medical point of view, the most threat is supra -goods ixodic ticks, individual species of which usually tolerate different infections. Most common Tick -borne diseases in Europe and North America are tick -borne encephalitis and borreliosis (Lyme disease). However, others may occur in different regions of the world: for example, in Russia -Comeses, Tularemia, and North Asian tick-reaches, in USA - Babusiosis, erlichiosis and spotted fever of the rocky mountains.
When a tick is bitten, it must be carefully removed so as not to cut the proboscis, which otherwise remains in the wound. Rospotrebnadzor Recommends Contact the emergency room where the ticks will help doctors. If this is impossible to do this, it is necessary to capture the arthropod with tweezers with tweezers or with clean gauze with your fingers as close to its rotary apparatus and, keeping strictly perpendicular to the surface of the bite, turn the body of the tick around the axis, and then extract it from the skin. After that, it is necessary to disinfect the place of the bite. Compilers of an authoritative medical directory MSD extremely Not recommended Apply alcohol, nail polish, petroleum jelly, burning matches and other folk remedies to extract ticks - this can make the animal even more strongly into the skin.
Rospotrebnadzor strongly advises to hand over the tick removed from the body to specialized laboratories. For example, in Moscow such a study Conducts The State Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology-its experts for two to three days check samples for tick-borne encephalitis, borreliosis, monocytic erlichiosis and human granulocytic anaplasmosis. Probably, the conditions and list of infections to which the tick tested depend on a particular laboratory.
One of the most dangerous and common diseases that can be infected through a tick bite is a virus tick -borne encephalitis. Often an infected organism copes with the causative agent on its own, and a person does not manifest any symptoms. However, if the immunity is not able to overcome the virus, a fever may begin, and in the future, inflammation of the brain, as well as the shells of the brain and spinal cord, may develop. Specific treatment of tick -borne encephalitis virus does not existTherefore, as in the case of colds of viral diseases, the patient is recommended to rest, profuse drink and, if necessary, painkillers. Since encephalitis is often difficult, a person may need hospitalization, but even then doctors will fight with symptoms (for example, provide breathing support or stop the edema of the brain), and not with the virus itself. Therefore, the knowledge that the biting tick was a carrier of encephalitis will not give any advantages in treatment.
In Russia, as a measure of post -contact prevention Applied injections of immunoglobulin, but today No data About clinical studies that would convincingly confirm the effectiveness of this method. In addition, there are suspicions that in some cases immunoglobulin can only aggravate the course of the disease, which is why it has ceased to be used in many countries. Since tick -borne encephalitis is a viral infection, a preventive use of any antibiotics is useless, because they are ineffective against viruses. The most effective means of prevention is considered vaccination.
As for Borreliosis, then vaccinations do not exist from him. Flow Diseases begins with a pronounced rash and fever, however, if treatment does not start in a timely manner, after a few months the patient may develop paralysis of the facial nerve, arthritis, heart rhythm disturbances and other problems. Like other bacterial infections, borreliosis is treated with antibiotics. However, abuse them, especially without the recommendations of a specialist, is not worth it due to the risk of antibiotic resistance. At the same time, US diseases control centers (CDC) They saythat in some circumstances, the doctor may prescribe a single preventive technique of doxycycline immediately after the bite of the tick in order to reduce the likelihood of infection. The same applies to other bacterial infections transferred by these animals: anaplasmosis And Erlichiose.
It is logical to assume that in cases where the development of diseases can be prevented due to the preventive use of antibiotics, it is really worth finding out as early as possible whether the tick was contrast. However, the CDC is extremely Not recommended Start any treatment based only on the results of such tests. Firstly, an infection from an infected tick could simply not have time to transmit to a person, then nothing needs to be done. Fast removal of arthropod after a bite seriously reduces the likelihood of infection, although the minimum time required to transmit infection at the moment Not installed And, apparently, it varies depending on the type of bacteria of the Borreli clan. Secondly, even if the tick is healthy for tests, there are no guarantees that he was the only one-perhaps a person simply did not notice another or more bites of other ticks, which, in turn, could be infected. Then this negative analysis of a particular tick will only complicate the diagnosis, because, having discovered any symptoms in himself, a person will be less likely to connect them with a bite and can drag them out with a doctor.
In addition, the symptoms of borreliosis may appear three days after infection - in this case, the preventive administration of antibiotics will not help and a full course of treatment will be needed. So, testing, if it takes several days, will not give any advantages. Specialists also agree with the position of CDC UK Security Agency of Great Britain And Canadian public health agencies. Both of them, however, take ticks for testing, but not for the diagnosis of patients, but for statistics - what diseases ticks tolerate in a particular area.
Thus, after the bite of the tick, it can be attributed to testing in the laboratory, but the result, whatever it may be, will not be one hundred percent confirmation of whether a person has become infected or not. In addition, there are no specific treatment from some viral diseases carried by ticks, and therefore it makes no sense to learn about the possible infection as soon as possible. To combat common bacterial infections, there is post -contact therapy, but it must be carried out in the first days after the bite. If you spend them waiting for the test results, you can miss this time. In addition, ticks tolerate many different diseases, but laboratories carry out tests only on the most common of them. In any case, after the bite of the tick, you should consult a doctor for advice.
Correction 07/06/24: Data on the minimum time from the moment of the tick bite, necessary for infection with borreliosis, is deleted, since at the moment there is no consensus about the exact dates in the scientific community. Information has been added that the operational extraction of the tick infected with borreliosis reduces the risk of infection. The original material can be found by link.
Photo on the cover: pexels.com
Read on the topic:
- CDC. Preventing Tick Bits
- CDC. Tick Bite: What to Do Do
- Is it true that in the USSR there were much less ticks than in modern Russia?
- Is it true that Japanese saboteurs were brought to the Far East?
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