Over a period of six days in May of this year, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment received accounts of four cases of tick paralysis — a rare but serious disease that can occur with prolonged exposure to a biting tick.
The four individuals all resided in or had recently visited within 20 miles of each other in the mountains of north central Colorado, according to an article in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The patients were a 6-year-old girl, a 78-year-old woman, and two men, ages 58 and 86. Initial symptoms included difficulty walking because of lower extremity weakness and tingling sensations.
The tick causing the disease was embedded in the skin on the patients' neck or back and removed within a day or two of the their admission to a hospital. Once the tick was removed, symptoms improved within a few days, although the three adult patients reported residual weakness several weeks later.
The article recommends that people who live in tick-endemic areas should routinely check their bodies for ticks, especially on the head, neck and back. It also recommends insect repellents applied to the skin and clothing to prevent bites.
Doctors need to consider tick paralysis in the differential diagnosis of ascending paralysis, the authors of the report advise, and to check patients with these symptoms for the presence of a tick, especially among individuals living in tick-endemic areas in the western part of North America.
"Ticks should be removed by grasping the tick close to the patient's skin with forceps and pulling with a steady, even pressure," the report states.
