By Emily Mitchell

Tiny ticks -- blood-sucking arachnids found in North Carolina and throughout the world -- can cause enormous health problems when their bite is undetected and untreated.

Paul Lantos, MD, pediatric infectious disease specialist at Duke, explains what you need to know about ticks and their bites, and recommends ways you can prevent common tick-borne illnesses.

Know Your Ticks and Their Diseases

Different ticks carry different diseases. Click through the slideshow to learn about different ticks and the diseases they carry.

The deer tick carries bacteria in its gut that spread Lyme disease, the most common vector-borne illness in the United States.

[1 of 4]

Lyme disease is often diagnosed after presentation of a distinct, bulls-eye rash, often greater than 5 cm in diameter. This rash appears within weeks of a tick bite. As the bacteria spreads throughout the body, people may experience arthritis, or swelling in the joints. Other symptoms of this disease include meningitis, paralyzed nerves, and heart block.

[2 of 4]

The American dog tick spreads Rocky Mountain spotted fever. People with this illness feel like they have the flu -- high fever, muscle aches, headaches, joint pains and many times a rash on the hands, feet, and outer extremities. Rocky Mountain spotted fever can be lethal if left untreated.

[3 of 4]

The lonestar tick carries human monocytic ehrlichiosis (HME). HME has similar symptoms to Rocky Mountain spotted fever, but usually has no rash. The lonestar tick is also responsible for STARI, the "Southern Tick-Associated Rash Illness." This rash may be difficult to distinguish from the rash of early Lyme disease, but patients with STARI are generally not sick and do not experience the complications seen in Lyme disease.

[4 of 4]

Location Is Everything

The good news for people living in North Carolina is that you aren’t likely to contract Lyme disease around here. More than 90 percent of all cases of Lyme disease occur in the Northeast and most of the rest occur in the upper Midwest.

There have been a few confirmed cases of Lyme disease that were contracted in NC, but this appears to be a very rare event.

The bad news is that NC is the top location in the U.S. for contracting Rocky Mountain spotted fever -- and this tick-borne illness can have deadly outcomes.

The map below shows where you are most likely to contract vector-borne illnesses in the United States. The darker colors indicate the highest risk areas for contracting the respective diseases.

Stop that Tick

It takes at least 24 hours for ticks to transmit disease-causing bacteria to humans, so you have a relatively long window of time in which to remove the tick and prevent infection.

Lantos’ tips for preventing tick-borne illness include:

• Check yourself. If you or your child has been outside around long grass, do a quick tick check to make sure none of the blood-sucking creatures have attached themselves. Removing them early means they don’t have time to transmit the disease.
• Bathe after spending time in the yard. This has been shown to prevent the spread of Lyme disease, and probably works for other tick-borne illnesses. This may be because you are able to spot and remove the tick before it transmits dangerous bacteria to you or because you wash the tick off before it decides to attach.
• DEET, please. Use bug repellents to deter ticks. DEET is particularly effective in repelling ticks. The American Academy of Pediatrics approves the use of DEET in children over the age of two months, in concentrations up to 20 percent.
• Make a fashion statement. If you or your child are going to walk or play in long grass, tuck your pants into your socks, wear long-sleeved shirts and tuck them into gloves, or consider spraying your clothes with Permethrin, an insecticide that both repels ticks and kills them on contact.

I’ve Been Bitten, Now What?

If you find a tick feasting on your blood, don’t panic. According to Lantos, many ticks don’t carry the bacteria for these common vector-borne illnesses, and even if you’re bitten by a tick that carries the bacteria, you aren’t necessarily going to contract a disease.

Instead of running to the ER, follow these steps:

1. Get a pair of tweezers, grab the tick as close to the skin as possible and work it out of your skin gently, making sure to take the head and mouth along with the tick.
2. Put the tick in a jar or container and make a note of the date you found the tick. If you do feel sick in the next couple weeks, bringing the tick along to the doctor can help speed diagnosis. Testing ticks for bacteria is not generally available or recommended, but identifying the tick will help your doctor guess which illness you may have been exposed to.
3. Watch for symptoms of infection. In the week or two following your tick bite, if you find yourself feeling sick with headaches, muscle ache, joint pains, or rash, you want to seek medical attention immediately. Research at Duke has shown that RMSF is much more deadly if left untreated for five days or longer.

Chronic Lyme Disease? Don’t Bet On It

Symptoms attributed to chronic Lyme disease include fatigue, joint pains, and cognitive problems.

Lantos notes, "These symptoms are not at all specific to Lyme disease. In fact, these symptoms may actually be indicative of other serious diseases. The term 'chronic Lyme disease' lacks any clinical or biological definition, and, because of this, one cannot really speak of it as a recognized disease."

Lantos recently participated on a national committee to review the Infectious Diseases Society of America's Lyme disease guidelines. After reviewing many clinical trials, the panel concluded that the treatment of Lyme disease through prolonged antibiotic courses does not improve patient outcomes any more than placebo.

Prolonged antibiotics can even pose a great risk for patients because of side-effects caused by the drugs or the intravenous catheters used to administer them.

Lantos encourages patients that the initial, two-to-four week course of antibiotics used to treat most cases of Lyme disease almost always wipes out the bacteria that cause this disease.