Tick activity begins in April; North Dakota Department of Health sampling for out-of-state species
Apr. 13—GRAND FORKS — As temperatures rise, so do ticks rise from their winter inactivity.
While April is the usual beginning of tick activity for the year, warm weather through winter and early spring has caused some early movement of the insects, said Amanda Bakken, west Nile virus surveillance coordinator and epidemiology assistant from the North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services' Division of Disease Control and Forensic Pathology.
"Even as far back as late January, we were having some calls and reports coming in about ticks being out and about," she said.
Ticks start to appear when temperatures are above freezing for multiple days, Bakken said, and stay active until late fall, around the months of September or October in North Dakota. There is also a lull in activity during the peak of summer in July and August, when temperatures are higher and there is less humidity.
Bakken said it isn't necessarily unusual for them to appear in winter or early spring, if the weather is warm long enough to make them active. Still, she and her colleagues were surprised by reports of ticks in late January.
The kinds of ticks common in North Dakota are dog ticks, also known as wood ticks, and deer ticks. The Department of Health and Human Services keeps track of ticks reported through passive sampling from partnerships with veterinarians North Dakota Game and Fish Department staff and North Dakota Wildlife Services staff, as well as from some active sampling by the department. In 2023, 858 dog ticks and three deer ticks were reportedly collected, data that Bakken said is skewed due to them mostly coming from veterinarians who pluck them off of pets.
A lone star tick was also reported in 2023. Lone star ticks, Gulf Coast ticks and brown dog ticks are all on the department's radar. There is not enough evidence to show if these ticks are moving into North Dakota, or are possibly just stragglers that came into the state on whatever they were attached to.
The department is planning to do more active sampling in 2024 to see what ticks are in North Dakota and where in the state they are. In active sampling, people go out to collect ticks through tick traps and by holding out pieces of fabric for ticks to grab onto.
These other ticks carry their own diseases, though lyme disease is the most reported in the state. The lone star tick, for example, is known for carrying alpha-gal syndrome, which causes an allergy to red meat. A man from Minnesota's Northwest Angle, for instance, was diagnosed with
alpha-gal syndrome in 2021
. Paul Colson said some of his symptoms included nausea, diarrhea, rashes, tongue and throat swelling and vomiting. However, in 2023,
he said acupuncture
helped him get over the allergic reactions.
If someone is bitten by a tick, Bakken recommends using tweezers to pull the tick up "steadily and smoothly, straight upwards," followed by washing the area with soap and water. Using a different method of removing the tick, or killing it while it is still attached, are not good practices, she said.
"You don't ever want to twist it. You can snap off the mouth part," she said. "It can still cause disease as well as cause secondary infections. I think sometimes people will try putting petroleum jelly on the tick and try to suffocate it or some extreme measure where they'll light a match and then blow it out and then stick the match on the tick. We don't ever want to encourage any of that."
The North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services has
multiple tick-related resources
, such as steps for preventing tick bites and removing ticks, as well as more information on tick borne diseases and their symptoms.
