You have to watch your arms and legs, in summer, when you wear short clothes.
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If you plan to spend the weekend outdoors, watch out for ticks. Contrary to popular belief, they are not found only in the forest. A quarter of tick bites occur at home, 22% in private gardens and even 4% inside the home. This is what emerges from a participatory science study conducted by the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Inrae). Hence the importance of watching your arms and legs, in summer, when you wear short clothes, because ticks can transmit certain diseases via bacteria. In Europe, the tick is the first vector of disease from animals to humans.
It’s those black or brown mites the size of a pinhead. They have no antennae or wings and have four pairs of legs. Most of the time the bites are harmless, but one in six ticks carries the bacteria responsible for Lyme disease. In this case, a red spot appears on the skin a few days after the bite. And in the absence of antibiotic treatment, the disease can sometimes cause skin, muscle or neurological damage.
More exceptionally, some tick bites can also subsequently cause allergies to red meat. This concerns 3% of adults. Hence the importance of not lying down or walking in tall grass without protecting your arms and legs. And if you spot a tick attached to the skin, you have to detach it with pliers or your fingernails by turning it, as if you were unscrewing it.
Citizens can advance research on ticks by specifying their geographic location. There are several possibilities: in the Nancy region you can chase away ticks in your garden by passing a special white sheet through the grass. Elsewhere in France, you can report tick bites on the internet or on a smartphone application. And you are even invited to send ticks to researchers by post: you just have to tape them to a sheet in an envelope. All the information is on citique.fr.