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One of the Facebook users shared photos of her child with several dozen red spots on the handle. It looked like an allergy or a skin disease. Meanwhile, the baby was attacked by tick larvae.
- A nymph, a transitional form of a tick, can transmit pathogens that are harmful to health
- When it gets under the skin, it looks like a dot made with a pen.
- Only in the Kabacki Forest in Warsaw, 40 percent are infected with Lyme disease. ticks
Is it possible for one person to have several dozen tick larvae? “Unfortunately, yes,” the biologists say.
Are tick larvae dangerous?
The female tick lays up to 5 eggs. It does this in dark, damp places, such as in the trunk of an old, decayed tree or in forest litter under a shady bush. Tick eggs are very small white balls that all together look like a speck of saliva or a frog’s squawk. The larvae emerge from them within a dozen or so days.
Fortunately, only a dozen or so percent of the larvae manage to escape from such a nest. The rest are most often crushed by the eggs of their siblings, says Dr. Marta Supergan-Marwicz from the Department of General Biology and Parasitology of the Medical University of Warsaw in Warsaw.
If we accidentally find ourselves in the vicinity of the nest, we can fall victim to even several hundred larvae, which, after hatching, spread out within a radius of several meters. They are very small, about half a millimeter in size. They look like a dot on a pen. They are clearly visible in the sun.
Tick larvae have six legs, while a nymph or mature specimen has eight. Like mature ticks, they need to drink blood, so they look for a host.
Find out more: Tick bite – what to do?
What should I know about tick larvae?
As already mentioned, the larva is the first form of a tick, which, like the transitional form (nymph) and the adult form, is very dangerous. It takes 3 to 36 weeks for the eggs of a female tick to turn into a larva, which, after drinking blood, turns into a nymph (this cycle lasts shorter – from 5 weeks to 5 months).
The larva is able to drink 3 ul of blood.
After being bitten, the larva leaves its host, moulting and thus transforming into a nymph.
Also check: Are ticks overrated?
Why do larvae attack children?
The tick larva – although weaker than the nymph and the adult specimen – is able to penetrate human skin. If he has a choice, he prefers children because their body is more delicate. In humans, it looks for places where the skin is the thinnest, so it can occupy the eyelids, neck, knee cavities, intimate areas or the navel. So when a baby sits on the grass in the place where the larvae have just hatched, it can be attacked by even several dozen to several hundred individuals. Also, the forest rodent that hits such a place will fall prey to the larvae. – The forest mouse can have whole ears in larvae that look like small bunches of grapes. Moving through the forest, it will spread the larvae to different places – says Dr. Supergan-Marwicz.
Attached to the human skin, the larva looks like a tiny bright scab that flips open with a fingernail. There may be redness or a pale border around it. In some it is bigger, in others it is smaller.
- Also, find out what is characterized by migratory erythema
Babesiosis – a disease that is transmitted by the larvae
The vast majority of studies prove that the larvae do not transmit Lyme disease. – There have been isolated reports that the larvae had this pathogen in them. However, they could get infected from their host on which they were found – explains the biologist. However, he adds that the larvae can transmit babesiosis (piroplasmosis). – And although we associate it mainly with canine disease, several species of Babesia can be dangerous to humans, especially those with weakened immunity. A healthy person will undergo such an infection almost like a cold, but for a child with reduced immunity, organ transplant or HIV infection, it can be really dangerous – he explains.
The tick larva takes about three days to saturate with blood. When full, it falls off the skin. Then, in a dark, humid place, it moults and turns into an “eight-legged” nymph. Such a transformation is a bit like shedding the skin, e.g. by a snake. Spiders also do this. – If we find in the house something that resembles a dried up spider, it is not rather his corpse, but a moult that he abandoned – explains Dr. Supergan-Marwicz.
Tick nymph – more dangerous than a larva?
The nymph is larger than the larva. It is one and a half millimeters long and has a brownish-black color. To become an adult, it must be saturated with blood. It takes about a week for this. Although it can travel several dozen meters thanks to its eight legs, it does not always find a host. It most often hunts like an adult, waiting for its prey on blades of grass. If she fails to do so until winter comes, she may hibernate and begin the hunt again on the warmer days.
- What diseases do ticks transmit?
When it hits a human, it grabs a fold of skin and cuts it open with its two front legs, and then digs its snout into our body. – Unfortunately, tick nymphs transmit all diseases that adult individuals infect us with – warns the biologist. A well-fed nymph increases its size from about one and a half millimeters to even three millimeters. When attached to the body, it looks like a small, dark, “tear-shaped” scab. The nymph is removed similarly to the adult specimen, using tweezers.
How does the tick test in the laboratory look like?
The tick nymphs pulled out of the body, just like adults, can be examined whether they were infected with pathogens that are dangerous to humans. – More and more such laboratories are being created all over Poland – says Dr. Supergan-Marwicz. Some of them, however, do not inspire confidence, she adds. – Especially if for PLN 100 they offer a test for the presence of 20 pathogens in a tick, including those that do not occur in these arachnids at all, e.g. toxoplasmosis or toxocarosis. In addition, the method of quantum physics. And these are the ads I found – he warns. The average cost of testing one pathogen is about PLN 100.
In order to examine an adult tick, a nymph or several individuals found on the body of one human, they are ground in the laboratory, making arachnids like a “cocktail”. It is exposed to various substances. In this way, DNA is isolated, which makes it possible to check the presence of pathogenic pathogens. It is worth checking if the tick was infected with Lyme disease, anaplasmosis and babesiosis. If the tick was infected, consider giving the patient medication with the doctor. According to research conducted on females in the Kabacki Forest in Warsaw, the percentage of infected with Lyme disease in this population of ticks is about 40%. and remains at the same level.
Find out more about Lyme disease:
- Lyme disease – questions to which it is good to know the answer
- You can protect yourself from ticks, but you should think about vaccination
- Mosquito and tick repellants can endanger your health
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