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Nervous About Ticks?
Keeping Young Explorers Safe Outdoors
By Laurie L. Dove
When Kerry Bush rolled through a pile of leaves outside her family's northern Virginia home, it was a picture-perfect childhood moment. Unfortunately, this all-American snapshot nearly caused the young girl to suffer from a serious illness – one that few people expect to find in the average backyard.
The culprit? Ticks. In Kerry Bush's case, three of nature's stealthiest predators attached to her skin and, undetected until the next day, set in motion a series of symptoms ranging from swelling and fever to a mysterious rash. The ticks that attached to her scalp and back are among the most common insects to affect children, says Dr. Richard Falco, a medical entomologist at Fordham University's Louis Calder Center in Armonk, N.Y.
While having a creature attach itself without invitation is enough to make one's skin crawl, there are more serious reasons to avoid the bite of a tick. "Tick bites are a concern because of the potential for ticks to transmit infectious diseases such as Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever," Dr. Falco says, who adds that tick bites also put people at risk for lesser-known diseases such as babesiosis, which is a parasitic infection, or ehlerchia, which is an infectious blood disease.
In fact, each year there are more than 20,000 cases of Lyme disease alone, Dr. Falco says. "During the past five years, more Lyme disease cases have been reported in the United States than in any other five-year period in history," he says. "Lyme disease is a significant problem. Its neurological consequences are lifelong."
Although the northeastern United States, which includes the Bush family home near Washington, D.C., continues to report the most cases, the Midwest also ranks high for tick-borne illnesses.
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