Spring is here and spring also means: ticks. They lurk while walking in the woods, having a picnic in the meadow, or pulling weeds in the garden. Especially those who have children can check the backs of their knees or armpits for the beasts in the evening. There are chewable tablets only for dogs. Once he has eaten them, the ticks simply fall out of his fur, dead.
And what about us? A Californian biotech company now wants to apply the principle to humans: a pill that makes us inedible to ticks. If they suck our blood, they absorb the active ingredient in the pill, which is only toxic to them – and die. The pill makes us the tick’s last meal, or at least that’s the idea. But there are still a lot of unanswered questions, especially whether the ticks die quickly enough before they can pass on pathogens through a bite. Sting, that’s what researchers now call it, because the tick’s sucking act is more like stinging.