In May 2015, in the Rostov region, a tick bite ended in the death of a person, an employee of Russian Railways, a resident of the Zimovnikovsky district. Inhabited on a distant farm, he turned for medical help very late.
Ticks are coming!
In May 2013, the first cause of death was a tick, and it happened here, in the Rostov region. In 2014, two facts of death from an acari bite were recorded. Ticks in the Rostov region are now a real threat for several reasons.
Firstly, premature heat contributed to the creation of favorable conditions for the early activation of arthropods. Secondly, for ticks, not without human help, all conditions for active reproduction are created, and each female is able to lay from 1000 to 17, 000 eggs. True, units survive from this amount.
Reasons for the attack of the Don region
Livestock farming is destroyed. Thousands of herds of cows and bulls, millions of sheep that trampled grass earlier, the natural habitat of ticks, are absent. Sanitary treatment of territories is poorly carried out due to its high cost. All this leads to the fact that ticks in the Rostov region attack residents in their own yards. The worst thing is that these arthropods from the class of arachnids cause Crimean hemorrhagic fever, encephalitis and many other deadly diseases.
Bloodsucker Predators
11 cases of tick bites recorded in the area, entailed a disease of CHF. The abbreviation stands for "Crimean hemorrhagic fever." To date, 7 types of blood-sucking ticks that attack humans have been recorded in the Don. Moreover, these predators feel the approach of a warm-blooded host at a distance of up to 5 meters.
They are not only on the ground, they can be found at a height of up to 1 meter. Tick species in the Rostov Region have the following Latin names: Hyalomma marginatum and N. scupense, D. Marginatus and R. rossicns, I. ricinus, I. laguri and Haem. punctata. More recently, only in 2008, only a few specimens of these blood-sucking arthropods were found, and now they have captured almost the entire area. A detailed scientific description of each species does not make sense here; they all have common features.
A bunch of deadly diseases
Ticks in the Rostov region, especially ixodidae, are carriers of the following serious diseases - the aforementioned CHF, Ku fever, tularemia, and such a dangerous infection detected this year in the region of natural focal infection, such as borreliosis, or Lyme disease. Ticks are especially active in the Proletarsky, Salsky, Volgodonsky, Veselovsky and Martynovsky regions. In the region, 900 cases of a human bite by a tick were recorded.
The most common species in the area
What are these parasites? Acarology (a science that studies ticks) describes 40, 000 of their species, of which just over 650 species are known to be ixodic, or parasitoform, blood-sucking acari. Which of these ticks belong in the Rostov region? The photo attached below shows one of the most active bloodsuckers. The most common species, affecting 43 districts and 11 cities of the region, is D. marginatus, which adapts very easily to the environment and is a causative agent of vector-borne diseases, that is, it, in essence, is a carrier of infectious diseases from one person to another.
Work in progress
And the distributor of Crimean fever, a species of HT marginatum, spread in 40 districts and 9 cities, although not so long ago it could be found only in the south and southeast of the region. As already noted, all fatal cases occurred as a result of human infection with CHF, although seven species recorded in the Rostov Region can cause a whole bunch of serious illnesses. The cause may be crushing of the parasite on the skin (which cannot be done in any way), and the tick bite itself. The Rostov region, according to the Ministry of Emergencies and Rospotrebnadzor, is experiencing an invasion of these arthropods. The situation is so dangerous that, despite the high cost, 11.5 million rubles were allocated to combat these parasites. The goal is to treat the territory of the Rostov region. The governor added another 1.8 million rubles.
Encephalitis carriers
To the question "Are there encephalitis ticks in the Rostov region?" You can answer in the affirmative. Parasitic carriers of tick-borne encephalitis, diseases that affect mainly the central nervous system, used to be found only in the southeast of the region, but recently isolated cases have been observed everywhere. Tick-borne meningoencephalitis is spread by tick bites, whose activity occurs in May-June, they are called Ixodes ricinus. This species was found in the Rostov region. Ticks of this species are carriers and a reservoir for the tick-borne encephalitis neurotropic virus.
Virus tanks
In the wild, the virus circulates between ticks and additional intermediate hosts, which are animals, mainly birds and rodents. But a deadly virus is also found in anthropurgic foci (areas that are greatly altered as a result of human activity). Here, goats and cows serve as additional reservoirs for it. Moreover, this virus can be transmitted through the egg to the offspring of these pets. A person can become infected through bites and crushing of a tick on the skin (vector-borne transmission) or during alimentary transmission - when raw products from infected animals enter the human body. The virus, adapted to low temperatures, is easily destroyed even at 70 degrees. Encephalitis ticks in the Rostov region are especially active in May-June, but an increase in incidence is also observed in August-September. When bitten, the virus immediately enters the bloodstream. The incubation period in this case lasts 2-3 weeks, when ingested with infected products - 4-7 days.
Creepy bunch of diseases
Of all the above species of ticks that live in the Rostov region, it remains to consider H. Scupens, RH. Rossicns, I. laguri and Haem. Punctata. These ixodid ticks are the causative agents of the following diseases.
The initial Latin letter H in the name of a species means the genus to which this species belongs, in this case Hyalomma. All types of this subgroup are carriers of CHF. H. Scupens is ubiquitous and parasitizes animals in the cold, from October to May. They are carriers of blood-borne diseases of animals, such as hemosporidosis. The genus Haemaphysalis (in our case, Haem. Punctata), discovered in 1844, combines ticks with short proboscis with which they transmit the causative agents of tularemia, brucellosis, Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever and even human plague. The initial letter I (I. laguri) means that this type of tick belongs to the long proboscis, which are carriers of bacterial and viral infections of humans. What ticks in the Rostov region belong to the genus indicated in the name in capital letters RH? Rhipicephalys (in the Rostov region the species is Rossicns) are small mites, peddlers of babesiosis, an acute infectious disease of animals and humans. First discovered in Yugoslavia in 1957.
Some data
Acari Ixodidae is the largest group of parasitic arthropods. Ticks in the Rostov region, the description of which can be continued with information about sizes, are very dangerous. The following data are inherent in all species - the length of a mature male is 2.5 mm, the size of a hungry female is 3-4 mm (when pumped with blood, it increases by more than 2-3 times and reaches 10 mm). The stages of development of the tick are as follows: egg, larva, nymph, adult (adult individual).
Given the danger of ticks and the growing desire of Rostovites to visit nature as often as possible, there is a need to know certain rules of protection and prevention.
The most frequently detected virus in the Rostov region
On the territory of the region, the CHF virus is constantly circulating. Since this type of disease is mortally dangerous, and the area is particularly susceptible to it, it needs to be examined in more detail.
The Nairovirus of the Bunyaviridae family — the CHF virus — has a mortality rate of 10–40%. The carriers are both wild and domestic animals. All of them become infected by a tick bite, and the infection remains in the blood for a week. If an infected animal bites other ticks, a tick-animal-tick relationship occurs. Several species of these arthropods can become infected with CHF viruses, but tick mites of the Hyalomma species are its main carrier, as noted above.
Risk of infection
A person becomes infected in several cases - directly during a bite, when working with slaughtered infected animals. This danger is primarily exposed to people engaged in animal husbandry. There is infection with a nosocomial infection when the mandatory sterilization rules for medical equipment are not followed. Infection occurs from person to person - in close contact with patients. When infected with CHF through a tick bite, the incubation period lasts 3 days (however, cases were recorded up to 9 days), and when it comes in contact with infected tissues or blood, it lasts 5-6 days (maximum 13).
