Ticks are insects that occur in forests, parks and heathland areas, but also simply in the garden. One in five ticks carries the Borrelia bacterium. If those infected insects bite people, they can convey Lyme’s disease. In Lyme disease, people can get a red ring or spot where the tick bitten. The result eventually disappears, but the bacterium can stay in the body.
The disease can be treated with antibiotics, but if that does not happen on time, muscles in the face can become paralyzed. People can also see twice, lose strength in the legs, get heart problems or suffer from painful or swollen joints. Of the 27,000 people per year who run the disease, more than a thousand long -term complaints receive.
According to the data from Tekenradar, an online platform on which people can report their tick bite, 6,035 tick bites were registered in the Netherlands last year. Half of that sign was removed within eleven hours, a quarter within four hours. That is an improvement compared to ten years ago, when people often only removed the tick after fourteen hours.
Yet it remains worrying that a quarter of the sign stayed in the skin for more than 24 hours, which increases the risk of infection with the Borrelia bacterium. RIVM and Wageningen University hope that people will remove ticks even faster in the future to further reduce the risk of contamination.
Ticks are common in forests, heathland and parks, but also in gardens. With the spring approaching, the researchers expect that many new tick bites will be registered in the coming months.