TICKS, LICE, MAGGOTS AND BEDBUGS

TICKS AND LICE


Ticks are blood-sucking creatures related to spiders. They evolved from spiders and became parasites. They have eight short legs, powerful jaws and special sense organs at the end of their front legs that enable them to locate a host by detecting odors and humidity.

Ticks wait on leaves, stems and grass for a host to pass by. This may seem likely a inefficient way of locating a host. Ticks are very patient. Some species can go for seven years between meals.

Once it finds a host, a tick digs through the hair to the skin , cuts an incision with its pincers and, holding on with its teeth, inserts its grooved snout, covered with backward-pointing hooks, through which it sucks blood. It will gorge itself for several hours or days and may swell from the size of rice grain to the size of a large marble. If it is mature, it will drop off and breed.

Ticks have powerful proteins and efficient anticoagulants in their saliva. The slow-feeding ixodid tick alternatively sucks blood and inserts its saliva in the wound, using proteins that deactivate the host’s immune system, preventing inflamation and immune system responses. A bite that otherwise would cause itching or pain remains unnoticed allowing the tick to continue feasting on blood. The rapid-feeding Argasis tick produces proteins in its saliva that prevent the blood from clotting so it can feast quickly on its host and drop off and make an escape.

Lice are usually itchy annoyances found in your hair. They can transmit typhus (bacteria) and louse-borne relapsing fever (bacteria)You can avoid lice by washing yourself, your hair, and your clothes frequently. If you are worried have a friend examine your hair for lice eggs which usually laid near the base of the hairs. They can be redirected with an insecticide shampoos such as Lorexanne, Suleo and Pormula PCT (Delva).

Tick-Borne Diseases

Ticks transmit: 1) Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (virus); 2) Lyme disease (bacteria); 3) Relapsing fever (borreliosis, bacteria); 4) Rickettsial diseases (eg: spotted fever and Q fever, bacteria); 5) Tick-borne encephalitis (virus); and 6) Tularaemia (bacteria). In Sweden, an increase in number of cases of tick-borne encephalitis has been blamed on global warming.

Lyme disease is a tick-borne infection passed on by ticks. No vaccine is available, Symptoms include fever, headache, extreme fatigue, aching joints and muscles, mild neck stiffness and bulls eye rashes. Treatment is usually with antibiotics. If untreated, lyme disease can lead to heart, nervous system and joint disorders.

The Lyme disease bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, is spread through the bite of infected ticks. The blacklegged tick (or deer tick, Ixodes scapularis) spreads the disease in the northeastern, mid-Atlantic, and north-central United States.

For protection from ticks and insects use an insect repellent with at 30 percent DEET (some people recommend 95 to 100 percent), treat clothing with "Coulston's Duranon Tick, spray, and sleep under an insecticide-impregnated insect netting. Periodically check your body for ticks. If a tick penetrates your skin, remove the entire tick with tweezers or a tick removal kit by grasping the head and slowly backing it out.

Bed Bugs

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bed bug
Bed bugs are wingless insects that hide in the creases of mattresses, carpets and bedroom furniture and crawl out at night to suck the blood of human victims while they sleep. Victims wake up and find large, bloody, itchy welts on their skin.

Bed bugs are parasites that feed on the blood of humans, bats and chickens. Adult bedbugs can live up to a year without eating, which makes them especially hard to kill. A single female can lay enough eggs to infest an apartment. Evidence of bed bugs includes small dark spots on the mattress (possibly bed bug excrement), blood stains and unexplained bites on the skin.

After World War II, better household hygiene and the use of strong pesticides help eliminate them from the United States. But in recent years they have made a comeback there in part because the pesticides that brought them under control are now deemed to be too dangerous to use and the high number of international travelers that bring the bugs back from their trips. The good news about bed bugs is that they do not transmit any disease.

Removal of bed bugs can be very expensive. In the United States, it can cost between $500 and $1,000 to treat an office, apartment or house. The treatment by a professional usually involves a heavy dose of sprayed steamed chemicals to kill the insects. Trained dogs that cost about $8,000 to $10,000 each are often employed to search for bed bugs. If you want to try to do it yourself you can scrub mattresses, vacuum the carpets and caulk places where you think the insects might be hiding. If an insufficient job is done they can come back.

Bed bugs are expected to displace cockroaches and termites as the leading domestic pest insect in the United States soon if they haven’t already.

Bed Bug Sex

Bed bugs have a rather gruesome means of reproduction described by scientists as traumatic insemination. The male has a sharp, sword-like penis. He bypasses the females genitalia and thrusts his pointed penis through the body wall of the female’s abdomen into her body cavity and injects his sperm, which migrates through a maze of lymph (insect blood) to the ovaries and fertilizes the eggs.

Katherine J. Wu and Rachael Lallensack wrote in Smithsonianmag.com: When a male gets in the mood, he’ll mount a recently fed female (or, sometimes, male) and plunge his sharp, needle-like penis directly into her abdomen, ejaculating into the open wound (bypassing her perfectly functional reproductive tract, which is used only for outbound eggs). The encounter is as violent as it sounds: Females can die from their injuries or ensuing infections. They do, however, have a few tricks to survive, including a mighty genital structure called the spermalege that bolsters healing and immunity. In some cases, the female can stop this sexual soirée before it begins by curling forward, making it more difficult for the male to access her vulnerable belly. Why this doesn’t happen on every bed bug date remains a mystery. [Source: Katherine J. Wu , Rachael Lallensack, Smithsonianmag.com, February 14, 2020]

Female bed bugs suffer a 25 percent higher mortality rate than males as a result of infections introduced through the wounds. Females mate after the eat when their bodies have swelled up to 30 percent larger than normal size and they are unable to escape from the males.Mike Siva-Jothy, a bed bug expert at the University of Sheffield, told the Times of London, “This is a bizarre reproductive rite. This is so extreme it has only evolved once, The consequences of this form of mating is females die sooner, males are basically killing the females.” Female bed bugs are only known creature in the animal kingdom to possess an immune organ. The organ produces a wave of white blood cells as a line of defense against sexually-transmitted infections caused by males. When bed bug have sex the females suffer nasty wounds that easily become infected. Their immune organ is being studied as a way of producing a strong immune response of fight diseases such as malaria.

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bed bug life cycle

Centipedes

Centipedes and millipedes are terrestrial anthropods with many legs, with one pair on each of their many segments. Their heads have biting and antennae. They live primarily in forests in humid areas because they lack waterproof skin and breath through their skin like insects. Centipedes are carnivorous and have venomous claws to kill prey. They can run fast and often found among leaf litter. Millipedes are slower and mostly herbivores

Some rain forest centipedes can reach a size of 12 inches long and have poisonous fangs. Some species can inject enough poison to kill a small bird, mouse of frog. Smaller ones often possess the most poisonous toxin, Some centipedes are brightly colored. Other have dark bodies and legs that are bright yellow.

Segmented creatures like centipedes were the first creatures to walk on the earth. They appeared before insects and some species reached a lengths of two meters. From gills they developed breathing tubes called a tracheae. Some millipedes build their nests out of poop.

Young centipedes start off with just six of legs. As the get older they shed their skin and get a new pair of legs for every segment that is attached.

Four-inch-long poisonous black centipedes with yellow legs are prized ingredients in some oriental medicine concoctions in Korea and some places in China. These disgusting creatures can be quite aggressive. When attacked they rear up and strike like snakes and can run amazingly fast. My wife was bitten on the foot by one that crawled into her bed. Her foot was swollen for about a week.

A sign in front of herb shop in Kyongdong market in Seoul read: "Centipedes: we will roast and grind them for you." A centipede tonic in the shop was prepared according recipe described by Huh Joon, a Chosun dynasty physician who lived from 1546 to 1615. "Describing a man who sold centipede juice on the streets of Seoul, one American wrote in the Korean Times, the man "displays a whole towel that is positively crawling with centipedes the size of tongue depressors. With an enormous pair of tweezers, he picks off the centipedes and drops them in a boiling vat. From a tap at the bottom of the vat, a thick red liquid oozes into glass vials."

Maggots as a Cure

Doctors are increasingly taking a serious look at maggots (flesh-eating fly larvae) as a treatment for severely wound and ulcerated legs because the treatment has proven to be effective, easy and cheap. Maggots are very good at cleaning festering, gangrenous wounds. They are used on diabetics and other people who have a hard time getting wounds to heal by pressing them into dying flesh with wire-mesh bandages. Greenfly larvae are given patients who are assured that the maggots will not burrow into their skin. Maggots are especially effective fighting the super bug antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus aureus.

Maggots eat dead tissues and killing bacteria that could block the healing process. The use of maggots was common in the 19th century and early 20th century but fell out of favor after antibiotic were invented. The practice was revived out of concerns of patient using too many antibiotics.

Among the cultures that have that have used maggots have been Aboriginals in Australia, hill tribes in Burma and the ancient Mayans. Napoleon’s doctor commented on their effects. In World War I doctors discovered that soldiers that had been left untreated had healthy, pink flesh under their maggot-infested wounds. Their efforts to promotes maggots as a form of treatment was dismissed after antibiotics became widely embraced.

Dr. Thomas Stuttaford wrote in the Times of London, “The value of maggots in removing irretrievably wound-damaged tissue came into its own in World War I...In trench warfare, wounded soldiers often had to lie in no man’s land for hours, sometimes a day or two, until they could be brought back by patrols after dark...My father , who was a doctor for three years in the trenches, said he always reassured the casualties whose wounds were playing host to maggots that, disgusting as they looked, they would hasten the healing of the their wounds....Claims that maggots may have antiseptic action that destroys bacteria are quite possibly true but more important is that they remove the decaying flesh that makes a wonderful culture on which bacteria flourish.”

Researchers have found that maggot treatment for a severe, festering wounds can reduce the duration time of the treatment from weeks to days and cut the cost from $4,400 to $600. A study by maggot-supplier Zoobiotoc published in the Journal of Wound Care found that an ulcerated leg could be treated effectively with12 boxes of maggots, each containing 300 maggots. To treat the same wound with hydrogel, the common treatment for leg ulcers, cost $4,400.

Image Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cdc.gov/DiseasesConditions; Ticks from Global Lyme Allaince

Text Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; World Health Organization (WHO) fact sheets; National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides and various websites books and other publications.

Last updated May 2022


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