You may have noticed the increase in media articles this summer about ticks and tick-borne diseases. Take them seriously! The health risks are real. Protect yourself today with SickTick waist, leg and ankle bands.
The more you know, the better you’ll be able to protect yourself and your family, and most importantly, the better you’ll be able to respond if you feel you have been exposed to any of these tick-borne diseases.
Yahoo-Life just posted “5 types of tick-borne diseases and the symptoms to look out for, from blue rash to fever and chills” by Kate Hull on August 9, 2023. Did you know:
People are most susceptible to tick-borne infections during the summer, when they spend time outdoors?
Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease, but other tick-borne diseases are on the rise?
Follow her advice, if you have symptoms after getting a tick bite, you should see your doctor. She aptly points out that tick-borne diseases are on the rise, with a 25% increase in cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2001 to 2019. While lore might have you believing otherwise, ticks can't fly or jump; rather, they crawl up and onto their prey. Ticks often cling to grasses or shrubs (but not trees) and scurry onto you as you brush past them. Yes the wind can blow them out of trees, but the vast majority of ticks are crawling up your legs.
Ms. Hull points out the most common tick-borne diseases, and the symptoms to watch out for:
Lyme disease which can trigger a bull's-eye rash. Lyme disease is spread by the blacklegged tick, also known as the deer tick. Many people who get Lyme disease develop a red or blue rash that spreads out two or more inches. Only 20% of people get the well-known bull's-eye rash. Other symptoms of Lyme disease include fever, severe fatigue, headache, muscle and joint aches, and swollen lymph nodes.
Rocky Mountain spotted fever can leave a splotchy red rash. Cases of Rocky Mountain spotted fever have steadily risen over the last two decades in the United States, from 495 cases in 2000 up to 5,709 in 2019. Roughly 60% of cases are reported in North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and parts of Arizona. RMSF is spread by a few different ticks, including the Rocky Mountain wood tick, American dog tick, and the brown dog tick. Apart from a splotchy red rash, other early symptoms of infection include a headache, fever, and gastrointestinal issues.
Anaplasmosis is not associated with a rash, but can cause flu-like symptoms. Anaplasmosis cases have been increasing in the United States, from just 348 in 2000 to 5,655 cases in 2017. It is most commonly reported in the Northeast and upper Midwest. Anaplasmosis is transmitted by the blacklegged tick — also called the deer tick — as well as the western blacklegged tick. Symptoms of anaplasmosis typically begin one to two weeks after a tick bite and include fever, chills, severe headache, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and loss of appetite.
Babesiosis can cause flu-like symptoms. Some people who contract babesiosis don't develop any symptoms, and won't need treatment. But others develop symptoms like fever, muscle or joint pain, nausea and headache.
Southern tick-associated rash Illness can cause a rash similar to Lyme disease. Lone star ticks are responsible for Southern tick-associated rash illness (STARI). The most notable symptom of STARI is a rash, which resembles the Lyme disease bull's-eye. A STARI rash usually develops after six days. STARI patients are less likely to have multiple rash spots, and the size of their spots is smaller than those seen in Lyme disease. Patients with STARI may also experience fatigue, headache, fever and muscle pains. Since STARI is often misdiagnosed as Lyme disease, it is unclear how many cases occur each year.
Alpha-Gal is a harder to detect allergy caused by ticks. Bites from the lone star tick have been increasingly tied to alpha-gal syndrome, also known as the "red meat" allergy.
Another great article recently published in the Scientific American is “Red Meat Allergy Caused by Tick Bite Is Spreading—And Nearly Half of Doctors Don’t Know about It”. By Tanya Lewis on August 7, 2023.
Ms. Lewis describes alpha-gal in detail, noting that the bite of the lone star tick, found in the U.S. South, Midwest and mid-Atlantic, can trigger a bizarre and sometimes dangerous allergy to red meat (such as beef, pork and venison), dairy, gelatin and some medications. Known as alpha-gal syndrome, the condition is caused by an immune reaction to the sugar alpha-gal (galactose-α-1,3-galactose), which is found in the flesh of most nonprimate mammals. More than 110,000 people in the U.S. tested positive for alpha-gal antibodies from 2010 to 2022, according to a July 28 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But researchers think the actual number of people living with the condition may be closer to half a million—and cases are increasing.
The most frightening part is that many health care providers don’t know about alpha-gal syndrome at all. A 2022 CDC survey, also reported on July 28, 2023, found that 42 percent of them had never heard of the condition. And more than a third of those who were aware of alpha-gal syndrome were not confident in diagnosing or managing it. If people with the syndrome consume animals or products with alpha-gal sugar, they can suffer reactions ranging from diarrhea to hives to anaphylactic shock. There is no treatment, and many patients are forced to radically alter their diet for years—or for life.
The article goes on to note that there’s a group of patients who report primarily gastrointestinal symptoms, so they’ll have diarrhea or vomiting. Often this will come late at night because they’ve had an evening meal that included red meat. And there are other patients who have more traditional allergic reactions—who will have hives—and some develop anaphylaxis. They may have trouble breathing, swelling of the tongue, those kinds of symptoms—which can be quite serious and often result in visits to the emergency department. It’s often difficult to tie these reactions to the consumption of meat that may have happened earlier in the day, and it’s also difficult to associate it with tick bites that might have happened weeks or months before all of this started. All these factors make it difficult to recognize and diagnose. The majority of alpha-gal cases are in a region starting from Missouri and Arkansas, going east through Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and then stretching up the Eastern Seaboard a little bit.
Knowing the symptoms and expected locations can help get you pointed in the right direction if you live and work in tick country.
Then finally, have you heard of Tick- and Louse-borne relapsing fever? The CDC just recently released the following information. Relapsing fever can be caused by various species of Borrelia bacteria that are distantly related to Lyme disease. Relapsing fever Borrelia infections are categorized into three main groups based on the vector that transmits the bacteria: soft ticks, hard ticks, and body lice. These diseases differ in their epidemiology and severity:
Soft tick relapsing fever (STRF), also known as tickborne relapsing fever
Hard tick relapsing fever (HTRF) caused by Borrelia miyamotoi
Louse-borne relapsing fever (LBRF)
Tick-borne relapsing fever (TBRF) is a rare infection linked to sleeping in rustic cabins, particularly cabins in mountainous areas of the western United States. The main symptoms of TBRF are high fever (e.g., 103° F), headache, muscle and joint aches. Symptoms can reoccur, producing a telltale pattern of fever lasting roughly 3 days, followed by 7 days without fever, followed by another 3 days of fever. Without antibiotic treatment, this process can repeat several times. See your doctor right away if you feel you have any of these symptoms or suspect you have been exposed to TBRF.
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