The infectious disease specialist spoke about the main danger posed by tick bites

Tick ​​season is in full swing in the Capital Region. As you know, ticks are carriers of a number of infections dangerous to humans. The most unpleasant of them are tick-borne encephalitis and tick-borne borreliosis. Where is the danger of meeting a tick? Is each tick infected with infections that are dangerous to humans, and is it possible to understand by its appearance whether it is contagious or not? How to avoid meeting with these arthropods? What to do if the tick is still stuck? Where to apply? What to have on hand in the country to minimize the risk of infection? These and many other questions were answered by a well-known infectious disease doctor, a permanent expert of MK, Professor Nikolai Alexandrovich Malyshev during an exclusive broadcast at MK.

Every year, about half a million Russians turn to various medical institutions in the country about tick bites. Usually the season starts in April, and by May and June the situation reaches its peak.

In networks, Muscovites complain about some special aggressiveness of ticks this year. In addition, this season the demand for the vaccine against tick-borne encephalitis has increased by 51%. “This is not a 100% protection method, but it protects in most cases. But in order to protect yourself from tick-borne encephalitis, it is better to get vaccinated at the beginning of the year. Ticks appear in the spring every year, and they are hungry, although a hungry tick can live 11 years. But in order to start breeding, he needs blood – both males and females. But according to statistics, we do not see any sharp increase in the number of bites, “said Nikolai Malyshev.

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) practically does not occur in Moscow, although imported cases from other regions are recorded. However, the list of endemic territories includes the Taldom and Dmitrovsky districts of the Moscow region, as well as the nearby Yaroslavl, Tver and Ivanovo regions, where many Muscovites have dachas.

“Remember that the tick can be found everywhere, even on the lawn in front of the house. The tick itself is not dangerous, the infections it carries are dangerous. The most dangerous strains of TBE are carried by ticks in the Far East: scientists have described the tick-borne encephalitis virus there,” says Nikolay Malyshev.

Lyme disease is much more relevant for the metropolitan region – the number of cases of infection is growing every year. If back in 1998 only 98 cases of borreliosis were registered in the city, in recent years their number has exceeded several hundred. Epidemiologists attribute this to the development of park and forest park management, horticulture and horticulture, tourism, economic transformations, and urbanization of focal landscapes. At the same time, most often, city dwellers become infected with Lyme disease in dachas or in other regions, although approximately every tenth case of infection occurs already in the city.

And although the lethality of borreliosis is low, there is a high probability of developing serious complications, including on the joints, heart, eyes and other organs. The disease can be cured with antibiotics if therapy is started on time. It is also good that even a tick infected with borreliosis does not always transmit the disease to humans: a lot depends on how long it sucked blood. To get sick, he needs to drink blood for at least 12 hours (for comparison: tick-borne encephalitis is transmitted in the first minutes of infection along with anesthetic saliva).

The smartest thing, Professor Malyshev emphasizes, is to try to avoid being bitten: “Wear long-sleeve shirts, tuck your trousers into boots, use repellents. can be obtained even in the city center by bringing a tick home with a bouquet of flowers.”

If you find a tick on yourself, you should carefully remove it. “The tick does not know that if it is filled with oil, it stops breathing. It is already difficult to pull it out, and if it is also oily, then even more so. There are special spatulas and tweezers to extract the tick, however, if there are possible, seek medical help at a trauma center.When removing yourself, in no case do not take the tick with your bare hand – remove it with a cotton swab, preferably treated with alcohol.It is important to remove the tick along with the head, because if it remains, the virus will continue through it enter the bloodstream, besides, the place can become inflamed.The longer the tick sits on the skin, the more virus it injects and there is a direct relationship between the dose of infection and the severity of the disease.Therefore, I recommend contacting medical institutions.In addition, doctors know which tick-borne infections are common on their territory. Unfortunately, there are cases when, even with a negative analysis, an infection can be – and, conversely, you can get a false-positive result, “the professor notes.

“Not all ticks are contagious. In different territories, there can be 4%, 10%, and 16% infected. In the Far East, up to 40% of ticks are infected with TBE. But if it is laboratory confirmed that the tick contains pathogens, 10% become ill. And even if the possibility of getting infected is 1 in 400, he will not care when it turns out that he is sick, in a big company or not.And in case you are in an area where there is a TBE and you are not vaccinated, it is better not to wait for the results analyzes, and to introduce immunoglobulin – it is administered within three days,” says Nikolai Alexandrovich.

At the same time, Dr. Malyshev does not advise drinking antibiotics, if you just found a stuck tick on yourself, you should definitely consult a doctor. Antibiotics do not work against viral tick-borne infections, and with tick-borne borreliosis, you first need to obtain confirmation of infection.