As children spend more time outdoors in warm months, parents and caregivers should step up efforts to avoid tick bites and Lyme disease. Tiny nymph-stage deer ticks that carry Borrelia burgdorferi are most active in early summer and live in wooded areas, tall grass and brush. Ticks pass through three life stages—larva, nymph, adult—and nymphs cause most infections because they are small and hard to spot; adults can still transmit disease into the fall.
Lyme disease affects 475,000 people in the United States each year. Most cases respond to antibiotics, but roughly 10 to 20% of infected people develop persistent symptoms such as fatigue, brain fog and joint or muscle pain lasting months or years. A vaccine from Pfizer is in the final stages of development and would require three to four doses if approved, Linden Hu of Tufts University School of Medicine notes.
Key prevention steps include:
- Shower after outdoor activities to wash off ticks before they attach.
- Do nightly checks on ears, underarms, waistbands, behind knees and along the scalp.
- Remove ticks with fine tweezers, grasping close to the skin and pulling upward—avoid yanking or digging.
- Use DEET-based repellent and wear permethrin-treated clothing; commercial treatment can last about 70 washes, while home spraying usually lasts three to five washes. Keep wet-treated items and spray away from cats; dry-treated clothing is safe.
Not every tick carries Lyme; infection rates vary from 5% to 50%. Watch for an erythema migrans rash that appears three to thirty days after a bite as an expanding red oval or circle—the classic bull’s-eye appears in about 30% of cases and clinicians often look for a rash at least 5 centimeters wide. Fever, a growing rash, fatigue, headaches or joint pain after a tick bite should prompt immediate medical evaluation. If a tick looks engorged and has fed for more than 48 hours, a single dose of doxycycline can be given as post-exposure prevention, and early treatment with oral antibiotics such as doxycycline or amoxicillin in children can prevent complications.
Difficult words
- nymph — small immature tick stage that can infectnymph-stage, nymphs
- larva — very young tick stage before nymph and adult
- permethrin-treated clothing — clothes treated with an insect-killing chemical
- erythema migrans — expanding red skin rash after a tick bite
- engorged — swollen because filled with blood or fluid
- persistent — continuing for a long time, not ending
- doxycycline — an antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections
- post-exposure — given after possible contact to prevent infection
Tip: hover, focus or tap highlighted words in the article to see quick definitions while you read or listen.
Discussion questions
- Which prevention steps in the article seem most practical for families with young children, and why?
- How might a vaccine that requires three or four doses change parents’ decisions about vaccination? Give reasons.
- What problems could caregivers face when doing nightly tick checks, and how could they make checks easier or more reliable?
