Lyme Disease, Deer Ticks, and Outdoor Workers
It’s that time of the year
again, those spring and summer months, when you are most likely to be bitten by a deer tick
and become infected with Lyme disease.
Not only do deer tick bites put you at risk for Lyme disease, but also
other potentially debilitating infections including babesiosis, anaplasmosis, bartonella,
tularemia, tick paralysis, and viruses.
Ticks are parasites which survive
by feeding on the blood of a multitude of vertebrate hosts including you and
your fellow workers. Although the
deer tick season is year round, the peak of the deer tick’s activity begins in
May and continues throughout the summer into the early fall. Nymphal deer ticks, the 2nd
stage of a two-year life cycle (larva, nymph, and adult), are actively looking
for a host during the spring and summer months. And once they attach onto you, they are very difficult to
detect due to their extremely small size (as big as a poppy seed). It will be from the nymphal tick bite
that you will most likely contract Lyme disease and/or another co-infection.
Deer ticks seek hosts by a
behavior called “questing.” Questing ticks crawl up the stems of grass or small
bushes, or perch on the edges of leaf litter with their front legs extended.
When your body or clothing comes in contact with the extended legs of a tick, it
will, in one split second, grab onto you and search for a suitable place on
your body to attach and take its blood meal. Nymphal deer ticks will remain
attached for several days until they become fully engorged with your blood and
drop off. They then eventually
molt into the slightly larger (size of a sesame seed) adult ticks which also
look for a blood meal during the succeeding months.
Not all deer ticks that bite
you will infect you with Lyme disease or one of the other tick-borne
diseases. Unfortunately, for anyone
working outdoors, a very high percentage of ticks carry one or several of these
diseases. Removing ticks promptly
can prevent the transmission of Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases, the
initial symptoms of which can include headache, fever, chills, fatigue, malaise,
stiff neck, and muscle and joint pain, all of which are very much flu-like in
nature. The appearance of a bull’s
eye rash in the area of a tick bite is diagnostic proof of a Lyme disease
infection, though most people do not get it, or if they do, are just not aware
of it.
If you discover a tick
attached to you, use pointed tweezers to grab the tick as close to the skin as
possible. Pull the tick straight out, taking care not to twist or squish the attached
tick. Finally, wash the bite site and apply an antiseptic. If you possibly can, send the tick (dead
or alive and in a zip lock bag) to a tick testing lab to see whether it is
infected with any disease organisms.
A reputable lab in this area is the Northeast Infectious Disease
Diagnostic Laboratory located at East Stroudsburg University (website: www.esu.edu/dna). You should also seek the immediate
assistance of your health care provider for advice on initiating prophylactic
treatment.
If you are working outdoors,
it is strongly recommended that you
wear tick repellent clothing. The clothing should be treated with permethrin, an insecticide which repels
and kills ticks and which has been approved by the EPA for use on clothing
apparel. You can treat your own clothing
and footwear, or purchase pre-treated clothing with the proprietary Insect
Shield label from suppliers such as: REI, LLBean, ExOfficio, Orvis, etc. Wearing
an EPA-approved insect repellent on exposed skin parts will also provide added
protection, but by itself, does not work as effectively as tick repellent
clothing.
Another very important tick-borne
disease prevention measure is to regularly examine yourself for ticks and promptly
remove them. Regular tick checks at
the end of the work day provide increased protection against Lyme disease and
other tick-borne co-infections.