You’ve probably never heard of Richard Ostfeld before. But it has a very interesting feature: The ticks that bite it die! But these deaths are not due to Ostfeld being particularly careful about squashing them, but because the immune system attacks as soon as it detects the presence of ticks.
Ostfeld stands out as one of the rare people who developed acquired tick resistance. Thanks to her work as a community ecologist, Ostfeld frequently wanders through tick-infested areas and has been bitten by hundreds of ticks over the years.
All these bites trained the immune system to recognize and attack certain proteins in the tick’s saliva, Ostfeld said. At this point, however, it’s worth noting that it’s not a good idea to get yourself bitten by ticks just to try to build up immunity, as you can get a tick-borne illness.
In Ostfeld’s case, when a tick begins to suck blood, white blood cells interfere with the scene, releasing an inflammatory chemical called histamine. Researchers aren’t entirely sure how histamine kills ticks, but it sure does work quickly.
“Shortly after trying to bury the tick mouthparts, I develop an itchy, burning scar where the tick bite was,” says Ostfeld. This mark stays for a few days but is completely harmless to Ostfeld. It is not possible to say that it is harmless for ticks.
This rapid tick death not only involves taking revenge on the tick that tried to steal Ostfeld’s blood, but also protects him from tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease or babesiosis, which can damage organs and cause long-term disability.
Ostfeld says one-third of ticks in northeastern states carry the bacteria that causes Lyme disease (Lyme borreliosis). He adds that roughly one in five ticks can infect you with babesiosis, and one in 10 ticks can cause anaplasmosis.
Given these possibilities, one of the hundreds of ticks that bit Ostfeld probably carried pathogens, but the ticks died before their infectious saliva could affect his body.
“It takes hours to several days for any pathogen to leave the tick and enter your body,” Ostfeld says. However, he adds that Ostfeld’s immune system kills ticks very quickly, so he never infects his body with pathogens.
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