Is there any reliable way protect yourself from a tick bite?

Currently, the most well-known method of preventing tick-borne encephalitis is vaccination for children from 3 years old and adults, which is recommended to be carried out 3.5 or (in extreme cases) 1.5 months before leaving for a dangerous region. However, we must not forget that with borreliosis and other bacterial and viral diseases(there are more than a dozen) transmitted by ticks, this vaccine will not work. For their prevention, other drugs are needed, which have not yet been created. In addition, vaccination has many contraindications.

Going to the cottage:

• take care of the right equipment - light-colored clothes (it is easier to notice a tick on it) with tight-fitting cuffs, trousers tucked into shoes;
• on the suburban area try to keep the grass cut short;
• every morning walk through the area with the so-called flag, which you can make yourself from a large piece of flannel or waffle fabric, mounted on a stick. By running such a flag on the grass and turning the fabric over, you can collect lurking ticks;
• While walking, inspect yourself every 30 minutes to notice ticks that have landed on your skin or clothing in time.

Everyone is at risk

Are there ticks at this time in the suburbs? They say the regions that are dangerous in this regard are only Siberia and Far East.

Alas, it is not. And although 70% of cases of tick-borne viral encephalitis are most often recorded in Siberia and the Urals, among the disadvantaged territories in terms of the incidence of this disease are Tver, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Leningrad regions and even several districts of the Moscow region. The number of natural foci of tick-borne borreliosis, in addition to the above, also includes the Tomsk, Sverdlovsk, and Vologda regions. Every year in Russia, more than 500,000 visits to medical institutions for bites are registered. Tick ​​attacks are not uncommon in city parks.

The first period of activity of ticks begins in April and lasts until mid-June. The greatest number of bites is recorded in May. The second "wave" begins in August and ends only by October. Separate bites are recorded in March, and in November, and even in January.

Males dig into the skin, drink blood, and then quickly fall, so a person may not notice them. But the females, sucking very tightly, sit and absorb blood for many hours and days. When piercing the skin, the tick releases anesthetic saliva, which sticks the proboscis to the wound for better attachment.

Are there ticks in the city

The widespread opinion that urban residents may not be afraid is refuted by the data of scientists and statistics of injured people. In every settlement and even a large metropolis there are park areas, squares and grass sown areas. It is in such places that ticks live in the summer. Scientists cannot answer the question of how they get there, but the sanitary services find them there.

But in small settlements, where green areas are located near forests, fields with livestock or summer cottages, ticks can be picked up almost on the road or next to the lawn, and the danger from them is small, but still exists.

What are dangerous ticks and their bites

Among the ixodid species living in the Russian Federation, 2 types are dangerous for people:

• European forest, common in Europe, except for the northernmost regions, in North Africa and the European part of Russia;
• , whose habitat falls on the zones of the middle and southern taiga.

According to statistics, the percentage of "bloodsuckers" who carry infections is only 1.5-5%. However, outwardly it is impossible to distinguish a healthy tick from an infected one, and due to the long incubation period such diseases, the first symptoms of the disease may appear only after 5-14 days.

Regions where there are most ticks with a high risk of diseases:

• borreliosis -,;
• - North-West of the Russian Federation, the Volga region, Karelia, the regions of the Central District, the Far East, most cases are recorded in Vladivostok and the region;
• hemorrhagic fever - Volgograd, Rostov regions, the Caucasus.

According to the Rospotrebnadzor, current year you can find regions where there is no . These are the central regions of the European part, including Moscow, Tula, Kursk, Orel, Ryazan, Smolensk, Lipetsk, Tambov, Murmansk regions, the Southern and North Caucasian federal districts, the Magadan region, the Kamchatka Territory, Yakutia and Chukotka.

How viral infections are spread by ticks

From an infected female, pathogens of infectious diseases are transmitted to all offspring. Infection of a person occurs during a bite, when the tick injects saliva with the virus under the skin.

When going on a picnic or a walk in the forest, where ticks may be, you should remember that they can only crawl in the upward direction, and select the appropriate equipment:

Information about where ticks can live and how they get on human skin will be useful for all people who are going for a walk in the forest or park, for a summer cottage or a picnic. Compliance with all safety rules will help to avoid the attack of "bloodsuckers" and possible infection with serious infectious diseases.

Ticks feel the approach of the victim for 10 meters

In this regard, ticks:

Since ticks need a support for which they cling, they will never be found:

• on the fields;
• in a high forest where there is no undergrowth;
• in clearings without bushes and forests.

• in the bushes;
• in grass;
• along the edge of the forest;
• on animals.

After walking in nature or contact with pets, it is imperative to inspect the body and clothing for the presence of ticks.

Video: ticks attack

How ticks get on a person

Table: how and where a person is at risk of being bitten by ticks

Photo gallery: the most common types of ticks

Agras mites live in the crevices of utility rooms, from where they crawl onto animals and humans.
Barn mites litter food with their waste Frequent guests in squares, parks and summer cottages
Parasites on marine life Gamasid mites have toxic saliva One of the most large species- ixodid tick
Shell mites enter the body with food The pasture tick is a carrier of diseases dangerous to humans and animals.

It seemed to you that there are more and more ticks every year? You didn't think so! Three years ago, 410,000 victims applied to the medical organizations of the country about tick bites, the year before last - 440,000; and in the past - 530 thousand people. How many didn't apply? Two million? Three?

About 2000-3700 people are infected by these arachnids with tick-borne encephalitis every year, 25-37 of them die. A little? Do not rush to breathe a sigh of relief. Cases of infection with Lyme disease (borreliosis) are detected up to 9900 per year, and this disease is not always detected. In total, ixodid ticks carry 300 species of pathogens (at least three viral, 22 bacterial and several protozoal infections are transmitted to humans) and infect ticks with them, according to some sources, every twentieth donor.

Why is the number of ticks growing so rapidly; is it possible to destroy them completely, how to protect yourself from ticks, what to do after a bite, why it is dangerous not to go to the laboratory, where the situation is the worst and how to process a summer cottage - Lenta.ru was looking for answers to all these questions.

Like raisins from compote

- On May we brought a horse from Rzhev, - oh personal experience Petr Kamenchenko, deputy editor-in-chief of Lenta.ru, tells how to communicate with ticks. - In the Staritsky district of the Tver region, I still have a house from my grandfather. Bought a nice 11 month old foal. He raised his mane, and there is horror! Hundreds of sucked ticks look like raisins from the day before yesterday's compote! We called the familiar horsemen - they say it’s the same everywhere and no repellents help, only comb out and pick with your hands ... We decided to go to the neighboring village to visit, dressed according to science: everything was bright, everything was tucked in, laced up, sprayed with chemicals ... We passed through an abandoned field , I look, and the child has seven pieces running up his jeans, shook it off. Thirty meters later - five more pieces ... I spent all my childhood in these places and then - in the 1970s - 1980s - I only heard stories about ticks. And now something unreal is going on!

Here's another example. My friend bought a Boerboel puppy and took him to a dacha near Moscow in early June, where he left him with his old mother until the next weekend. Run freely. And when he returned, the inner sides of the dog's ear suspensions were covered with clusters of sucking mites so that there was no free space left. The dog will not go to the country anymore.

Personally, on weekends I walk my dog ​​in Serebryany Bor park in Moscow. Despite the anti-tick collar and the treatment of the dog with a special spray, after each walk I remove from him about five running ticks and a couple of attached ones.

What happened? After all, fifteen years ago in Moscow and the adjacent regions, ixodid, or, as they are often called by the people, encephalitic, ticks were exotic, and no one heard about their bites in the city at all. And what is happening in the Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Vologda, Kirov, Perm, Sverdlovsk regions, the Komi-Permyatsk Autonomous Okrug, the Republic of Mari El, the Udmurt Republic - historically abounding in ticks? Not to mention the Tomsk region - the absolute champion in the number of ticks and diseases transmitted by them? The answer is hell.

In the Tomsk region, ticks attacked people twice as often 20 years ago than anywhere else in Russia (a thousand people with Lyme disease in 1996), but this year the number of attacks has at least tripled. According to the Rospotrebnadzor of the Tomsk region, on May 4, 2016, 1902 people came to the points of seroprophylaxis with complaints of a tick bite. For comparison, on the same day - May 4, but a year earlier - only 610 bitten people turned to the same medical institutions. And this is not a record. On May 20, 2016, 4,203 victims of ticks turned to Tomsk prevention centers. Can you imagine what happens to dogs and horses there?

DDT

The exact cause of the tick invasion is unknown to scientists. Two working versions of the test did not survive. According to experts, to increase the population ixodid ticks did not affect the decrease in intensity Agriculture and a corresponding interruption of the regular application of mineral fertilizers to the ecosystem, as well as a ban on burning last year's grass in fields and around settlements.

At a certain temperature and humidity, malicious insects show such endurance and the will to win that even "strangers" from horror films never dreamed of. An adult tick can live in an active state and without food for more than nine months. Although the standard life cycle ixodid is at least two years, in the absence of food or heat, ticks fall into diapause and can remain viable for up to seven or even 10 years. Eggs and adults are able to survive both drought and winter frosts.

More than 200 species of wild animals, birds, livestock, domestic animals and, much less often, humans serve as donors for creatures in Russia. Under conditions of diapause, ticks are practically invulnerable to special anti-tick poisons (acaricides).

Studying ticks is not easy. Under laboratory conditions, they exhibit a normally uncharacteristic lethargy, depriving the plausibility of studies on the effect of exposure to protective equipment. Attempts to create specialized bacterial preparations that destroy tick larvae ended in failure. The female tick, sucking blood, lays thousands of eggs, each of which, if it manages to pass the stages of larva and nymph, can turn into an adult.

The only poison that can stop a tick on an area or country scale is dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, better known as dust or DDT. 30 years ago, the drug was banned in most countries of the world, as it decomposes very poorly and accumulates in plants and organisms.

Perhaps it was the refusal to treat the natural breeding grounds of ixodid ticks with DDT that led to their current invasion.

Curious fact. In South Africa, DDT was banned later than other countries - in 1996. After that, the incidence of malaria immediately increased by 6.5 times. In 2001, South Africa lifted its DDT ban, choosing the lesser of two evils.

Image: Research Institute of Disinfectology of Rospotrebnadzor

What is dangerous bloodsucker

The most common disease transmitted through tick bites is borreliosis, or Lyme disease. In half of the cases, the bite site turns red, the spot expands, reaching a significant size in diameter. In some cases, borreliosis is initially asymptomatic or disguises itself as other diseases, for which it is called invisible. In the later stages, the disease leads to damage to the joints, heart and nervous system. Borreliosis does not apply to pets.

The most terrible tick-borne infections for humans are encephalitis (for Last year incidence in Russia increased by 16 percent) and Crimean hemorrhagic fever (139 cases per year).

Well, our best friends- dogs, if they are small, old or weakened - easily die from babesiosis (piroplasmosis), which destroys red blood cells. Unfortunately, there are no statistics on dogs killed by ticks.

All tick-borne infections are treated with early stages, but the only way not to catch borreliosis is to prevent the tick from being sucked.

Where the tick feasts

Ticks love leafy and mixed forest with thick, moderately moist bedding. In dry coniferous forests are ten times less common. There are none in the swamps.

They begin to attack at 4-5 degrees Celsius, in the second decade of April, and reach the peak of activity in the first half of June. In autumn, a second peak of activity is observed in some species.

“Contrary to popular belief, ticks do not fall from trees and do not jump,” says Olga Germant, senior researcher at the Disinfectology Research Institute of Rospotrebnadzor. “They hunt from the grass or from the bushes. Both larvae, and nymphs, and adults hunt, but mainly the latter stick to a person. The tick climbs onto a blade of grass, clings to it with three pairs of paws, and raises its front paws up, as if praying. At the tips of the front paws there is a whole mechanism for capturing the victim: a set of hooks and suction cups. In choosing a host, ticks are not picky at all. They react to heat. Having moved to a potential donor, ticks crawl up and try to find a secluded place. Until the moment of suction, about 30 minutes pass - this is the head start that is given to a person in order to remove the tick. In hazardous areas, it is necessary to constantly make mutual and independent inspections.

The seized tick should never be crushed by hand. It is necessary to put the tick in a glass container and deliver it to the nearest laboratory for the study of ticks, where the arthropod will be checked for encephalitis, borrelia, and so on. It is best to deliver the tick alive.

How to be saved

Ixodid ticks are only conditionally afraid of repellent repellents. If you still use repellents, you need to make sure that they contain at least 25-30 percent diethyltoluamide (DEET). But ticks are very afraid of special poisons - acaricides. The difficulty is that applying acaricides to the skin is strictly prohibited. They are sprayed on clothing, outside living quarters. Be sure to follow the method of application and the safety measures indicated on the label.

You can also purchase special clothing already treated with an acaricidal composition. Clothing should be light and solid so that the tick is visible on it. If you are going to a tick activity area, trousers should be tucked into socks, a shirt should be zipped and tucked into trousers, cuffs should be close to the wrists. Ticks cannot bite through clothes. Proper, acaricidal-treated clothing gives a 100% guarantee against a tick bite.

If ticks have appeared in your summer cottage, they can be treated with a special compound, and they will disappear for a month and a half. Must either order professional processing territory with acaricides, or carry out such treatment yourself. The Research Institute of Disinfectology recommends such products as Alpicid, Breeze 25% e. k.", "Gardex Extreme" (Gardex Extreme), "Concentrate to protect the territory from ticks", "MEDILIS-cyper", "Kleschevit super" and "Cifox". The processing method is indicated on the package insert (on the website of the FBUN Research Institute of Disinfectology of Rospotrebnadzor is given full information about all means allowed for use for this purpose).

The vaccine exists only for tick-borne viral encephalitis and tularemia.

Weak, but still a consolation can be the fact that not only Russia suffers from ixodid ticks and the diseases they carry. This problem is extremely serious in Canada, Germany, the Czech Republic, China, the USA and many other countries.

Two types of mites are found in the apartment - subcutaneous and dust mites, ixodid mites can also come across, but only if they were brought in by people or animals themselves.

Subcutaneous mites are very small and it is impossible to see them with the naked eye, but they can bring great trouble, living in the skin of their owners, causing various allergies and skin irritations.

Also, dust mites live in a person’s apartment, which feed on microscopic particles of dead human skin, which crumbles in large quantities on the floor.

Ixodid ticks are quite rare guests in apartments, because they live in forests and fields, and when they find their victim, they immediately stick to the skin and try to pull them out and destroy them as soon as possible.

What are dangerous house mites

The largest number of ticks is found near the bed where a person sleeps, they live on pillows, blankets, armchairs, in carpets and dusty corners of the room. Ticks can migrate with air currents from one room to another, or by being on your clothes, body, or things. Also, ticks can live on dusty cabinets, on bookshelves in baskets with dirty laundry. Since ticks feed on particles of dead human skin, they have enough food to their heads, especially considering that the skin young man completely updated in a month.

Subcutaneous mites live in the upper layers of the epidermis, but when the immune system is weakened, they can penetrate deeper and cause skin diseases.
The photo shows the consequences of a subcutaneous tick.

As we said at the beginning of the article, ticks cannot be seen, since their dimensions do not exceed 0.2 mm. To find out the number of dust mites in your room, dust should be collected and sent for microscopic analysis.

How to deal with ticks

Special preparations for the destruction of ticks