Tick-borne encephalitis can also be contracted through milk: the specialist said that it has been contracted in recent years

Speaking about tick-borne encephalitis, Dr. M. Žygutienė reminds that this is a disease caused by a virus transmitted by ticks. Ticks are the main spreader of this disease.

“Encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain – this tells us that this disease is not simple. How is it dangerous? First of all, its course is difficult. It is no secret to anyone that most of the time a person is hospitalized and receives treatment in a hospital, and the severity of the disease can be very diverse.

Not only that, the sick person still has residual effects. Some have shorter ones, others have longer ones, and some have them for life. Residual effects can range from mild to paresis (paralysis), disability, and some cases end in death. One other case of death is also registered in Lithuania. Older and unvaccinated people usually die,” says the specialist.

According to her, we can get tick-borne encephalitis not only from ticks, but also through food, specifically cow’s or goat’s milk, because ticks spread the same virus to animals. “If at that time there is viremia (presence of viruses in the blood – auth.), the virus gets into the milk of a cow or a goat, after consuming it you can get infected,” says the interviewer.

When asked whether dairy products can be dangerous, Dr. M. Žygutienė says that Austrians have registered cases where people got infected from cheese.

According to the NVSC specialist, such cases of tick-borne encephalitis infection through milk are registered almost every year in Lithuania, but earlier it was caused by cow and goat milk, and in recent years – only through goat milk:

“Those cases are neither very common nor very rare. For example, in 2018 we had as many as five outbreaks and 14 people were sick in all of them. All were infected through goat’s milk. The age of the patients was from 3 to 70 years old.”

When asked why there are more frequent cases of infection through goat milk, Dr. M. Žygutienė says that this leads to the fact that now cows are more often considered as herds, they do not protect themselves on farms and in their pastures, so the chance of them catching a tick is low:

“Those days, when every grandmother had a cow and grandfather used to take it out to herd the undergrowth and the crazy ones, are probably over, it’s really difficult to find a cow with a farmer. However, goats are still kept that way. In addition, we consider goat’s milk a panacea for all kinds of diseases. It’s okay, we can use it, we just need to do it right.

It should either be boiled – within 2 minutes the virus, if it was in it, dies, or heated to 70 degrees for 5 minutes, then the virus will die and it will be safe to consume milk. If we don’t want to do this, let’s get vaccinated against tick-borne encephalitis and drink that goat’s milk raw.”

The interviewer explains that the time when milk is dangerous is very short: “If a goat is bitten by an infected tick, the virus can be detected in the milk for 3-7 days, after which it is no longer detectable.” It’s just that the goat has antibodies circulating in the blood, but they don’t do anything bad, because we have those antibodies both after getting sick and after vaccination. In humans, the first symptoms appear after the incubation period, which lasts about two weeks, sometimes longer.”

Asked if the symptoms are different if bitten by a tick or infected through milk, Dr. M. Žygutienė says that the disease manifests itself with the same symptoms, regardless of the way it is infected:

“These are flu-like headaches, muscle and neck pains, temperature, fatigue. Headaches are very severe at first, then everything can calm down and after a week all the symptoms can arise again, only much more violently. Then the person is usually hospitalized. Symptoms are treated, as there is no specific treatment for tick-borne encephalitis.”

When asked how it is determined that a person is infected through goat’s milk, the interviewer says that only a specialist can determine this:

“During each registered case, a public health specialist conducts a diagnostic epidemiological study, tries to find out. They will always ask if you have had any milk. And it is very rare that one person would have consumed that milk. Usually there are two or more diseases in one place at the same time.

Of course, anything can happen in life, but it is rare for two family members to ingest infected ticks and develop symptoms at the same time. The news is that not all ticks are infected with the tick-borne encephalitis virus, very few – about 1 percent.”