RADAR
Biting Back
With dangerous tick populations on the rise, prevention and treatment are more crucial than ever.
By Dick Snyder
A family of three hike in the woods. Be prepared when you venture outdoors: wear a hat and gloves, long-sleeved shirts and long pants, and tuck your pants into your socks. | BACKGROUND VIDEO: EDOVSTOCK/ENVATO
OVER THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, every spring and into summer, we hear about ticks. How to prevent a bite. What to do if you discover you’ve been bitten. But what is a tick? The tick is a tiny member of the arachnid family that lives in grassy or forested areas and generally feeds on mammals, such as deer — hence the term deer (or blacklegged) tick. These ticks can carry Lyme disease and other bacteria that exhibit a range of symptoms, from simple to serious, that impact your every day.
The risks of contracting Lyme disease from a tick bite are growing at a rapid rate across Canada, says Dr. Nicholas Ogden, director of the public health risk sciences division at the Public Health Agency of Canada. Dr. Ogden researches climate change and its impact on microbial migration through zoonoses — infectious diseases that are spread between animals and humans. “We’re seeing an increasing proportion of ticks infected [with Lyme disease]. It’s quite high, as many as 30 to 40 percent of the ticks are infected.”
Ticks are also making their way into urban populations, travelling on animal hosts. Since 2009, annual human cases of Lyme disease in Canada have gone up — from 144 to more than 2,500 — and these are just the reported cases. Many tick bites can go undetected and Lyme disease can remain dormant, only to flare up months or years after a bite.
For Kitchener, Ont., resident Andrea Roth, it took three-and-a-half years and visits to more than a half dozen medical experts to determine that her husband, Ron, had contracted Lyme disease from a deer tick bite. She says the experts she consulted were unable to detect Lyme disease because they had not been trained to do so. Ron experienced cognitive issues, speech difficulties, paralysis and nerve and body pain. These are severe symptoms that tend to appear months or longer after a bite. “It is often misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis and asthma,” says Roth.
Spring and summer are peak tick seasons, so be prepared when you venture outdoors. Experts recommend applying an insect repellent containing DEET. As well, wear a hat and gloves, long-sleeved shirts and long pants, and tuck your pants into your socks. The goal is to keep ticks from reaching your skin. When you get home, throw your clothes in the dryer at high heat for 10 minutes and take a shower to wash away unattached ticks. If you suspect you’ve been bitten by a tick, Ogden advises consulting your doctor immediately.
“Experts recommend applying an insect repellant containing DEET. As well, wear a hat and gloves, long-sleeved shirts and long pants, and tuck your pants into your socks.”
A woman applies repellent on her arm. Why spray? As a precaution: there's an increasing proportion of ticks in Canada infected with Lyme disease. | BACKGROUND VIDEO: PROSTOCK-STUDIO/ENVATO
Key Tick Points
- Time is a key factor. The risk of infection is none to very low if a tick is removed within 24 to 48 hours. Within that period, it is important to detect and get started on a course of antibiotics to kill the bacterium.
- The bacterium is systemic, meaning it attaches to and affects numerous organs and can therefore have devastating effects.
- Ticks do not fly. They crawl up on long grasses and when people or animals walk through the grass, the static electricity whisks them from the grass and onto the person or animal.
- The lifecycle of ticks is influenced by temperature: they thrive in warmth. So, with warming temperatures associated with climate change projected to increase the range of their habitat, ticks will stay active for longer and in greater numbers.
- Most humans are typically infected through the bite of immature ticks (called nymphs) that are approximately the size of a poppy seed. (Although adult ticks — roughly the size of a sesame seed — can also spread Lyme disease.) As they suck blood, they grow in size but will still look like a small skin mole. If you notice a tick on your skin, it’s important to carefully extract it. Because its head is buried in your skin, if you just rub it off, you will only remove the body and the head with the bacterium will remain inside the skin. To safely remove, use a pair of tweezers and pull straight up to ensure the whole tick is removed.
- Lyme disease is also called the “Great Imitator” because when symptoms emerge, they look like so many other medical conditions, so diagnosis can be tricky. Prevention is always better than the cure.
Be prepared when you venture outdoors: wear a hat and gloves, long-sleeved shirts and long pants, and tuck your pants into your socks. | PHOTO: DEDOVSTOCK/ENVATO
Why spray? As a precaution: there's an increasing proportion of ticks in Canada infected with Lyme disease. | PHOTO: PROSTOCK-STUDIO/ENVATO