Stella Huyshe-Shires writes for the Sid Vale Biodiversity Group.
But don’t let them spoil your outdoor activities! In the UK the risk from a tick bite is small.
First the tick has to find you, then it has to attach to you and stay attached for enough hours to pass a disease on to you. Your tick may, of course, not be carrying any diseases anyhow! However, keep reading, because the possible diseases can be serious, so it’s worth understanding a bit more.
Ticks are tiny, spider-like creatures that latch onto skin for a blood meal and may pass disease in the process. They have a complex life cycle that starts with eggs laid by an adult female – the pea sized tick you may have seen attached to a cat or dog – easy to spot! The egg hatches into a tiny larval tick the size of this full stop. It latches onto a mouse or bird from which it may pick up disease. Areas rich in wildlife host more ticks – whether woodland or your garden. The larval tick spends several days feeding and then drops to the ground and changes into the nymph stage.
The nymph tick matters as this is the one most likely to attach to you. It is about the size of a poppy seed to start with. Ticks can’t stand drying out, so on a hot dry day they are more likely to be down near the ground. When the humidity is right, the tick climbs a leaf or stalk and waits for an animal to pass by. It uses hooks on its front legs to latch onto fur or clothing and climbs aboard.
It then has to find bare skin. If you tuck your trousers into socks and brush your clothes off before going inside, the tick may not even get that far. But the tick can walk quite fast, and there are gaps in clothing, and who wants to wear all that clothing on a sunny day anyhow?
So the tick is on your skin and has found a comfortable spot behind your knee, say. It has barbed mouthparts and drills into your skin to find a blood supply. Unlike a mosquito, the tick spends time preparing a feeding pit to ensure it can access a blood supply. It injects an anticoagulant, to ensure the blood flows, and immunosuppressive compounds and an anaesthetic so your body does not immediately react. At this stage, and probably for the next 12 hours or so, you won’t feel a thing.
After being outside, when you wash, run your hands over your skin. You may feel a small scab, and find you can rock it back and forth. Reach for your tick remover, and take it off! That might be all you have to do as the tick may not have been one of the roughly one in ten which carries disease in the UK, and may not have had time to pass disease.
The site of the tick bite will stay red for a day or two and then fade. But stay aware! Lyme disease causes a red expanding rash that starts on average about 2 weeks after the bite. Plain red, it generally doesn’t itch, and might be on part of your body you can’t see. ‘Flu like symptoms are the most common early symptoms – headaches, fatigue, numbness or tingling skin and pain in muscles or joints.
Your GP will treat you with antibiotics without a test if you have the typical rash. Treatment in the early stages is very successful, but disseminated disease can mimic other conditions, so awareness of a preceding tick bite can be crucial to diagnosis. If untreated the disease can affect the nervous system, joints and heart.
There are other less common diseases carried by UK ticks – see LymeDiseaseAction.org.uk for more information on these and images of the rash, so you know what to watch for.
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