Tick Bite Care, Without the Wait

If you discover a tick on yourself or a loved one:

1. Use fine-tipped tweezers to grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible.

2. Pull upward steadily and evenly — do not twist or jerk.

3. Clean the bite area and your hands with rubbing alcohol, iodine, or soap and water.

4. Save the tick in a sealed bag (optional) for identification or testing

*Do not apply petroleum jelly, heat, or nail polish to try to suffocate the tick

While many tick bites are harmless, early signs of infection can include:

If symptoms emerge within days to weeks, it’s essential to begin treatment early.

• Redness or swelling around the bite

• An EM (Erythema migrans) rash – This is often referred to as a bulls-eye rash, but that’s inaccurate. A ‘bulls-eye’ only appears a small percentage of the time, and any type of rash may occur 3–30 days later.

• Fever or chills

• Headache or muscle aches

• Fatigue

• Swollen lymph nodes

The Acute Tick Bite Package is ideal for:

• People who live in tick-endemic areas

• Hikers, campers, outdoor enthusiasts, or outside workers

• Parents of children exposed in tick-endemic areas

• Pet owners in rural or wooded regions

• Anyone who recently discovered a tick on themselves or a family member

It’s often very challenging for patients to get appropriate treatment for a tick bite, whether they’re going to their PCP, an urgent care or an ER. When treatment is provided, it often follows dated IDSA guidelines. We at Ravel, in conjunction with Bay Area Lyme, chose to follow ILADS guidelines, which were created by providers and researchers who have been working with patients and the complex chronic illness community for many decades.

Our friends at lymedisease.org just wrote a great article on the differences between the guidelines and were kind enough to share their graphics with us as well.

Most testing that’s available currently for tick bites is what’s called antibody testing. These tests look for your body’s reaction to a pathogen and it typically takes a person’s immune system roughly 4 – 6 weeks to mount a response. Meaning that if someone has been recently bit, testing is always going to come back negative.

There are some newer direct detection tests that have come out recently and more are in the works. But even with those, you have to get the test ordered, receive the kit, get the blood draw done and then get it sent back to the lab to review and wait on the results. In a best-case scenario, this takes at least a few weeks.

The science shows that treating early provides much better outcomes, which is why we treat based on a bite and a patient’s reaction to it.

Unfortunately, there are a wide variety of bacteria, viruses and parasites that can be transmitted via a tick bite, which cause what are often called co-infections. These include things like Alpha-Gal Syndrome, Anaplasma, Babesia, Bartonella, Ehrlichia, Powassan Virus, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and more.

There are actually a number of locations available to send in ticks to see what they carry. Please review the options from these prominent organizations in the space:

• Bay Area Lyme Tick Testing
• Global Lyme Alliance Tick Testing Laboratories
• Project Lyme Tick Testing Locations

It’s amazing (and scary) how much misinformation is out there regarding ticks and tick bites. Here are a few of the most common we hear:

• Ticks have to be attached for at least 24 hours to transmit disease. Um, false.
• If you don’t have a bulls-eye rash, then it’s not Lyme. Based on studies done by our partner, Bay Area Lyme, it’s actually only in a very small percentage of cases that a bulls-eye rash is present.
• My test came back negative, so I don’t have Lyme. This is perhaps the most dangerous one. Put simply, testing is unreliable, whether it’s an acute tick bite or you’ve been sick for years. For most of these conditions, a clinical diagnosis is appropriate, with testing used to provide insight along the way.

The short answer is ‘no’, it’s not a guarantee you won’t get sick. Our package is based off ILADS’ guidelines and the most reliable science available at this time. New studies are being done, however, and insights are coming out at a rapid pace in this space. We’re in a unique position to apply any break-throughs in what is almost ‘real-time’. In addition to that, we’ll be tracking the outcomes of these treatments over time, in the hope that we can help inform the standard of care for these debilitating conditions.