What is Tick-borne meningoencephalitis?
Tick-borne meningoencephalitis is a viral infection caused by contact with an infected tick. The virus is normally caused by the tick biting or breaking the skin of a part of the body. The virus attacks the central nervous system as well as the membrane surrounding the brain and the spinal cord. This particular disease has been steadily increasing worldwide for unknown causes.
Tick-borne meningoencephalitis has a variety of symptoms that can easily be mistaken for other diseases, though, in Tick-borne meningoencephalitis, most of the symptoms will occur concurrently. These symptoms include fever, malaise, aching muscles, anorexia which may lead to nausea, headache, vomiting, meningitis, stiffness of the neck muscles, encephalitis, drowsiness which may lead to heavy confusion, sensory disturbance or misinterpretation causing tastes and smells to be confused as well as sounds, and visual interpretations which often leads to hallucinations, difficulty moving normally sometimes leading to paralysis, and, in some cases if not treated, death.
These symptoms of Tick-borne meningoencephalitis will often occur in clusters in a short period after infection and incubation of the virus. Incubation may only last several hours, but has been known to last several weeks depending on the strength and activity of the infected individual's immune system. Death only will occur after most of the aforementioned symptoms occur first, though, some of these symptoms may bleed together causing their clarity to be severely blurred when combined with confusion and sensory malfunction. There has been theories that Tick-borne meningoencephalitis can be transmitted sexually, but this has never been fully proven. However, the stimulation a body goes through during intercourse can flare up these symptoms and cause the immune system to temporarily misfire. So intercourse should be avoided if one or more of the parties involved would be infected with Tick-borne meningoencephalitis symptoms.