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Tick Bites
Published in Charles Theisler, Adjuvant Medical Care, 2023
Ticks get onto the skin, tend to move to a warm moist location, and then bite onto the skin to attach themselves. Next, they burrow into the skin and feed on blood. Ticks are most often found on the head, scalp, or neck. Most tick bites are painless and cause minor redness and swelling. However, some ticks can cause illness or infection such as Lyme disease, anaplasmosis/ehrlichiosis, spotted fever rickettsiosis, babesiosis, tularemia, and Powassan virus. A tick should be removed as soon as it is found to help prevent disease. Symptoms of weakness, paralysis, fever, lethargy, numbness, headache, or rash (especially an expanding rash) are reasons to seek medical care. According to the CDC, tick-borne diseases are increasing nationally.1
Neuroinfectious Diseases
Published in Philip B. Gorelick, Fernando D. Testai, Graeme J. Hankey, Joanna M. Wardlaw, Hankey's Clinical Neurology, 2020
Jeremy D. Young, Jesica A. Herrick, Scott Borgetti
Tick larvae hatch in the early summer and obtain a blood meal from an infected mouse. The mice are not affected, but they remain spirochetemic and infectious. The next spring, larvae develop into persistently infected nymphs. Nymphs and adult ticks seek a blood meal in low-lying shrubs or grass, latching onto an animal when they sense warmth and carbon dioxide. Ticks may obtain a blood meal from many different animals, including humans, mice, deer, other mammals, reptiles, and birds. When the blood meal occurs, infectious spirochetes exit the salivary gland of the tick and enter the human host.
Severe Tick-Borne Infections and Their Mimics in the Critical Care Unit
Published in Cheston B. Cunha, Burke A. Cunha, Infectious Diseases and Antimicrobial Stewardship in Critical Care Medicine, 2020
Praveen Sudhindra, Gary P. Wormser
Ticks can transmit bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections. Epidemiology plays a central role in the consideration of tick-transmitted illnesses. Tick vectors are geographically limited, and transmission is usually confined to the months between spring and autumn. This chapter will focus on treatable infections that are most likely to be encountered by the intensivist.
Lyme disease in Western Europe: an emerging problem? A systematic review
Published in Acta Clinica Belgica, 2021
Olivia Vandekerckhove, Emmy De Buck, Eric Van Wijngaerden
Lyme disease or Lyme borreliosis (LB) is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato. It is the most common zoonotic disease in Europe and the USA. Humans can become infected after blood-feeding of an infected Ixodes tick, which feeds on birds and mammals. Early Lyme disease can present as a flu-like illness or, in 60% to 80% of infected patients, with a rash, of which erythema migrans (EM) is the most characteristic one, appearing 2 to 30 days after the bite. At this stage, the disease can be treated successfully with a few weeks of antibiotics. If not treated, the infection can disseminate into a systemic disease affecting mostly the joints and the nervous system and less frequently the heart [1]. Currently, there is no more vaccine available after Lymerix was withdrawn from the market in 2002 for different reasons. Therefore, effective tick-removal within 24 h and appropriate clothing in tick-infested areas are important preventive measures [1,2]. The total burden of LB in Europe is estimated at 10.55 disability-adjusted life years (DALY) per 100 000 population. The majority of this burden is caused by Lyme-related persisting symptoms, such as neuroborreliosis and Lyme arthritis. The early stages of LB have a more limited impact [3].
Modeling tick vaccines: a key tool to improve protection efficacy
Published in Expert Review of Vaccines, 2020
José de la Fuente, Agustin Estrada-Peña, Marinela Contreras
The existence of native tick wild hosts such as the white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) introduces another potential bias in the evaluation of vaccination strategies that must be taken into consideration. This bias results from the combined effects of landscape fragmentation and animal movements through the patchy environment. Estrada-Peña et al. [40] specifically addressed this problem using previous data on the protective effect of vaccination against tick infestations in deer [41]. The study concluded that the size of the vegetation patches and the distance between patches are critical for the successful control of tick infestations after deer vaccination. The presence of well-connected, large vegetation patches proved essential for tick control since ticks could persist in areas of highly fragmented habitat. The same approach was used by Wang et al. [42] addressing only the treatment with acaricides but supporting previous data about the importance of white-tailed deer, habitat fragmentation, and rates of contact between grazing cattle and wild hosts.
Tick transmission of toxoplasmosis
Published in Expert Review of Anti-infective Therapy, 2019
Approximately 865 species of ticks exist worldwide [24]. Of the many different tick species found throughout the world, only a select few bite and transmit the disease to people. Of the ticks that bite people, different species of ticks transmit different diseases [25]. Human-biting ticks in the US include American dog tick (Dermacentor variabilis), Blacklegged deer tick (Ixodes scapularis), Brown dog tick (Rhipicephalus sanguineus), Gulf Coast tick (Amblyomma maculatum), Lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum), Rocky Mountain wood tick (Dermacentor andersoni), and Western blacklegged tick (Ixodes pacificus). Ticks can ingest many kinds of microorganisms while feeding on blood from hosts; however, they may not be able to transmit all the microorganisms they ingest.