This column is in a series of columns about the Alpha-Gal Syndrome (AGS), the disease that makes humans allergic to red meat and dairy products.
I am writing this series because many folks reading my columns are, like me, “outdoor people”; they hunt, fish, farm, golf and so on.
Today, if you live anywhere in the eastern half of the US and spend time outside, you are at risk of contracting AGS because you live in an area inhabited by the lone star tick, the vector for AGS here in the US.
And if you want to reduce your exposure to lone star ticks, you first have to know the enemy.
The lone star tick is so named because the adult female of the species has a white spot on her back that resembles a white star on a brown background.
Although this tick for years lived primarily in the South, it now inhabits the entire eastern half of the US plus several providences in Canada. Obviously, this means it can now withstand colder temperatures as it evolves.
Unfortunately, its range of habitat continues to expand right along with the expansion of the white-tailed deer, a prime source of blood meals for the lone star.
If you have white-tailed deer in your neighborhood, you have or soon will have the lone star, too.
The lone star has four life stages: egg, larval, nymph and adult. In early summer, the adult female lays her eggs after being engorged from her last blood meal.
These eggs, numbering in the thousands, are laid about a month later in “tick bombs” or sacks of eggs. I had the misfortune once of stepping on a “tick bomb” in knee-high grass and immediately had more than 100 tiny tick larvae crawling all over me.
The eggs become larvae in about 30 days after birth and at that point, they need a blood meal to survive and transform into the nymph stage.
This search for a blood meal by tick larvae occurs from July through September, during which time those larvae that get a blood meal become nymphs.
The nymphs and adults then survive over the fall and winter months in the woods in leaf litter and debris.
The nymphs actively look for their next blood meal in the following spring and early summer, after which time they become adults. The adult lone star can survive up to two years.
Obviously, the worst time to be in tick country is from April through the end of July when the nymphs and adults are — you guessed it — bloodthirsty arachnids.
The lone star is an unusually aggressive tick. It locates it’s blood meals by sensing the carbon dioxide or body heat emitted by its potential victim, and once it realizes a blood meal is nearby, it will position itself on the edge of a branch, a blade of grass or on branches that overhang a trail so that it can intercept its victim.
This activity is referred to as “questing”. The adult lone star has eight legs and during questing, it hangs onto a branch or blade of grass with its hind six legs, reaching out with its two front legs to latch onto its intended victim.
For illustration purposes, let’s assume you are the victim. Once the lone star gets onto your body, it will survey the situation to determine where it wants to penetrate your skin and get into the good stuff.
It spreads saliva on the spot where it intends to bite; this saliva numbs the area so that you, as the blood meal, won’t feel it.
Then for the next 24 hours, the tick is figuratively “getting all the hoses lined up” that are necessary to accomplish that critical blood meal.
At that point, once “the hoses are all lined up,” it will eject most of its bodily fluids into you to make room in its body cavity for the blood that it is sucking out of your body.
Once the cavity is filled with blood, it will detach, lay eggs and the process starts all over again. Let me guess: are you grossed out yet knowing that this tick is exchanging bodily fluids with you?
In the next column, we will talk about common sense ways to avoid that lone star tick bite.
Note: The lone star tick is the vector for at least five serious tick-borne diseases — ehrlichiosis, tularemia, heartland virus, bourbon virus and AGS, the subject of this column.
So when that tick unloads those bodily fluids into your blood stream, this is how these pathogens get into your system.
Actually, your exposure to AGS potentially begins even earlier, when the tick smears you with saliva because tests have shown that that saliva contains the alpha-gal sugar molecule that is responsible your allergic reaction.
This is why it is essential that you remove any tick that is attached or unattached immediately after you find it, and why removal is so critical during the first 24 hours after a tick becomes attached.
(Bill Hoagland can be reached at billhoagland70@yahoo.com.)
