Ticks & Tick-borne Diseases
Ticks & Tick-borne Diseases
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Ticks carry many diseases, some fatal.
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Ticks commonly transmit 3 or more diseases at once.
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It can take years to diagnose them all.
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There are no reliable tests for many tick-borne diseases.
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There are no tests for some strains of some of these diseases.
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About half of patients are unaware of having had a tick bite.
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The tick can be too tiny to be noticed.
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Diagnosis may need to be clinical, based on symptoms and history of tick exposure during the past month.
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Symptoms resemble many other diseases.
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If a patient is still ill after being treated for a tick-borne disease, consider co-infections.
Argasidae (soft ticks)
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A tick’s head has only a mouth, which it inserts into the bite, and palps which feel for a cozy place to bite.
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Ticks have a mouth shaped somewhat like a long pinecone, with barbs that help hold it in place during feeding.
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Deer ticks don’t have eyes. Many other ticks have eyes on the edge of their shield, just behind the front pair of legs.
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Each leg has a claw on the tip to grasp onto a passing host.
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Ticks are hard to smother:
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Ticks breathe through two holes on their underside, behind their hind legs.
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They don’t breathe very often, only a few times an hour.
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They can survive underwater for 2 years.
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Putting something on a tick won’t smother it.
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It may irritate the tick and cause it to pull out
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The tick may contract its body and squirt germs from its gut into the bite prior to pulling out.
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