The new species of tick can overwinter in Austria and transmits dangerous diseases. However, the risk of being bitten by a local tick is much greater.
Due to climate change, the exotic giant tick, Hyalomma marginatum, has managed to establish itself sporadically in Austria. “What is worrying is that this new species of tick can import diseases that did not yet exist in Austria,” explained Reinhold Kerbl, Secretary General of the Austrian Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine (ÖGKJ) in a broadcast on Monday. Overwintering of the tick species was proven for the first time in June 2019. “The press” reported.
Typhus, Crimean-Congo fever
The giant tick is the main vector of the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, but can also spread typhus through rickettsiae. Crimean-Congo fever commonly occurs in Africa, the Middle East and other Asian countries, as well as the Balkans. Experts were recently able to detect the bunyaviruses that cause it in ticks in Spain and France, the ÖGKJ reported.
Symptoms of Crimean-Congo fever include high fever, muscle pain, dizziness, photophobia, abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting and, in severe cases, bleeding. The mortality rate is between five and 30 percent. In most cases, infection occurs through a tick bite. However, no contamination with bunyaviruses has yet been found in the giant ticks found occasionally in Austria.
Fever, headache, rash
Tick bite fever or typhus caused by rickettsiae is manifested by fever, headache, rash and a small, dying area of skin, the eschar, at the site of the bite. However, infected people do not develop such severe illnesses as with Crimean-Congo fever.
“The risk of being bitten by a giant tick in Austria is still minimal – especially in comparison to the “normal ticks” common here (Common Wood tick, Ixodes ricinus). But with climate change the risk can increase and we also have to think about this possibility,” says the doctor Kerbl, who heads the department for pediatric and adolescent medicine at the LKH Hochsteiermark in Leoben. (APA)
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