In recent days, people have almost talked about tick change, as if the bug were a new demon that appeared overnight. This partly reflects the asymmetry of the media, as ticks are not at all alien to farmers at large. Even for highly concerned city dwellers, ticks aren't far away.
“ I have served the King of the Tick.
For those who often go out into the wild to drill in the woods, they encounter various “ Poison bug ” Close encounters are part of everyday life: a mosquito bite turning you into a toad, a mountain leech bite turning your T-shirt red with blood, or getting up in the morning to dump a scorpion or centipede out of your hiking boots. One day in August 2007, somewhere in northern Shandong Province, I spent several hours throughout the day photographing insects in the trees. When I took a bath that night, I felt what seemed to be a lump on my scalp that did not hurt or itch. My companion came to take a closer look and exclaimed, saying that I had a soy-sized blood blister on my head. I told my companion to take a closer look at whether the blood blister had eight legs, and my companion found eight short, thin legs.
I got bitten by a tick.
The tick's eight legs tell us it's not actually an insect. The tick is actually a relative of the spider, belonging to the arachnid class Acarus. Just a few days ago, he was far less famous than his little brother. — Mites. In fact, like the mites that make many beautiful women talk about, most of the 800 kinds of known ticks are small, and the largest is only about one centimeter long. In addition, it does not fly and does not take the initiative to gather people's homes, so although the distribution of ticks is extremely wide, it has been little-known.
In fact, in the eyes of pathogenic biologists, the tick is absolutely an important ruthless role, it plays a great role in the epidemic process of many diseases, and even only mosquitoes can win it in terms of the type and breadth of the disease it spreads. Although, as with mosquito bites, in most cases a tick bite is not serious, if it happens, you may experience the following diseases: Lyme disease, spotted fever, q fever, forest encephalitis, hemorrhagic fever, babesiosis, Taylor's disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and anaplasmosis, which recently became red with ticks. In addition, the most common health problem after being bitten by a tick is skin infection, because the tick's blood-sucking mouthparts are very complex, with barbs on them, and once the tick is improperly pulled out, it is likely to break its mouth parts in the skin. Another very rare condition that has been portrayed in the media is tick paralysis, which can only be caused by a large number of tick bites over a short period of time and toxins in the tick's saliva.
“ Anaplasmosis ” Not difficult to cure
For most doctors, exposure to ticks and tick-borne diseases is rare, but that doesn't mean they're mysterious. In fact, any university medical parasitology and microbiology textbook will mention ticks and several common tick-borne diseases, and these tick-borne diseases can be treated if diagnosed accurately and promptly. Even if it seems strange “ Anaplasmosis ” Not to mention a large number of English literature related to it on the Internet, in 2008, the Ministry of Health has also issued the "Technical Guidelines for the Prevention and Control of Human granulocytic anaplasmosis (Trial)" to medical institutions at all levels, regulating the diagnosis and treatment and disease reporting system.
human granulocytic anaplasmosis (hga) is a disease known as human granulocytic anaplasmosis phagocytophilum (formerly human granulocytic anaplasmosis). Disease caused by human granulocytic ehrlichiae (hge). rickettsia is a tiny bacterium named after American etiological biologist howard taylor rickettes, who died on May 3, 1910, at the age of 38, of a tick-borne disease believed to be Rocky Mountain spotted fever. In 1990, a man in Wisconsin died after being bitten by a tick for two weeks, and scientists later isolated the pathogen in the patient's blood, which was later identified by molecular biological studies as an anaplasmosis, a type of Rickettsia. About 600 to 800 cases have been reported in the United States in recent years. The incubation period of the disease is one to two weeks, the onset of symptoms are similar to the flu, the main symptoms of fever, muscle pain and headache. The guidelines of the Ministry of Health indicate that elderly or immunocompromised patients with anaplasmosis are often critically ill. But overall, the case fatality rate is about 1%, which is not a high number, and the case fatality rate for ordinary flu is also between 1% and 1.5%. However, due to the small number of cases and the difficulty of culture in vitro, there are still many questions about this disease that need to be further studied.
Don't drag after being stung
What should we do when we see ticks around us?
First of all, you should avoid staying in woods and grass for a long time, and if you are an agricultural or field worker, you should use personal protection when entering tick areas. Wear a hat, long pants, and pants tucked into socks or boots. If possible, spray clothing and exposed skin with some insect repellent containing deet, which you can buy at any major supermarket. If you don't have to, you are advised to wear light colored clothing. This is not to say that light colors do not attract ticks, but once a tick on clothing can be easier to find.
When returning home from a possible tick area, check your pets for ticks first, as they are more likely to get tick bites than people. Pay special attention to your scalp, behind the ears, neck, armpit, popliteal, wrist, groin and other wrinkled areas of skin for tick bites when showering. Because some ingredients in the tick's saliva can make you feel no pain. Studies have found that most of the harmful microorganisms carried by ticks are transmitted to people more than 24 hours after the tick bite on the human body, if the timely removal of the tick within 24 hours, you can greatly reduce the chance of getting infected with tick-borne diseases.
Once you find a tick on your body, never pinch, tug, stimulate it with fire, or anything else, as doing so may cause the mouth parts of the tick to break off into the skin. Second, it will stimulate the tick to secrete more pathogen-carrying saliva, increasing the likelihood of infection. It is best to immediately go to the hospital for help, if the environment has to deal with it, then what you have to do is to find a pointed tweezers, clamp its mouth as close as possible to the skin, and then pull it out, do not shake around, so as not to break the mouth. After removing the tick, wash the wound with alcohol or water. Instead of throwing away a plucked tick, put it in a sealed plastic bag or bottle and freeze it in the freezer. This will make it easier for doctors to find the cause of tick-borne disease in the event of symptoms later on.
How to control diseases caused by ticks? The first thing to understand is that ticks are just a vector, and where tick-borne disease occurs in humans, there must be other animals carrying the associated pathogen, even though they may not get sick. Since ticks are not picky, their hosts can be diverse, and mice, wild birds, domestic animals, and pets can all be the source of tick-borne diseases. While actively treating human diseases, it is necessary to do a good job of host investigation and pathogen control. Second, in the event of a tick outbreak, a barrier should be established between the green belt and the residential area, just like a fire break, to remove weeds and trees and cut off the path of tick transmission to the residential area. The use of chemical pesticides is also a quick and effective method, and scientists have long carried out research on biological control, and some insect-fighting methods have been tried and tested.
However, it is certain that the tick neither burrows into the body nor lays eggs on the human body, and it is not as terrible as the legend.
An abridged version of this article was published by Beijing News Xinzhi Weekly.