Climate change supports the spread of ticks

class=”sc-3778e872-0 cKDKQr”>

“For the tick to not survive the winter, it needs really sharp low temperatures, sometimes for weeks,” Ute Mackenstedt of the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart said on Friday. Ticks are also active during the winter months, as temperatures as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius are becoming increasingly rare even in the Alps due to climate change.

The parasitologist warned that as a result of mild winters, ticks “are active early in the year or even active all year round.” Stable populations of ticks are found even in mountainous areas up to 1200 meters above sea level. “Ticks no longer take winter vacations.”

Ticks cope well with warm years

According to experts, even drier summers don’t bother animals as much as previously thought. Gerhard Dobler, head of the National Advisory Laboratory for tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) at the Bundeswehr Institute for Microbiology, said it has shown that ticks, and wood ticks in particular, “do quite well” adapting to warmer years. Local ticks can “very well” cope with local conditions.

Unrecognized TBE infections

Dobler pointed out that a TBE infection can also cause very atypical symptoms, so there is a risk of misdiagnosis, especially in children. The most well-known symptoms are the brain and meningitis, but summer flu symptoms such as fever, headache or vomiting, and even intestinal symptoms could possibly indicate a TBE infection. Of those infected, 98 percent were not vaccinated or were only incompletely vaccinated.

Lyme disease, which is caused by bacteria and can damage the nervous systems and joints, is most commonly transmitted by ticks. There is no vaccine against it.

(AFP)

Source : Blick