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Consult a qualified Lyme ( Borreliosis ) Disease literate doctor for medical advice if Lyme Disease is suspect.
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Mating makes ticks fat
Women may complain that childbearing adds a few pounds, but Canadian scientists say they have found out that simply mating can make certain female ticks blow up to 100 times their virginal size.
And it's the male ticks who are to blame for this weight gain, the researchers report in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"What happens is that a female will remain attached to a host, eating slowly and waiting to be fertilised," Reuben Kaufman of the University of Alberta, who led the study, said in a statement on Monday.
"If she does copulate, the seminal fluid contains an engorgement factor protein which acts as a signal to tell her to complete engorgement. Within 24 hours of copulation she will increase another 10 times her unfed weight."
The findings may offer clues for controlling the African cattle tick, Amblyomma hebraeum, Kaufman said. They identified the guilty proteins, found in the gonads of the male tick.
"We want to use these proteins as a basis of a vaccine," said Kaufman. "If we can vaccinate cattle against this protein, or voraxin as we have called it, then they would be significantly protected against ticks.
When Kaufman and graduate student Brian Weiss injected the voraxin protein into virgin ticks, the ticks grew to full engorgement. Then they immunised a rabbit against the proteins and found that about 75 per cent of the ticks failed to feed beyond the critical weight.
Ticks not only spread disease, but they affect milk and meat production in livestock.
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