What is important to know about wasp stings and their danger to humans

The wasp is far from the only insect that can bite very painfully. Ants, bees, bedbugs, flies and even some dragonflies bite no less sensitively, and sometimes much more painfully than ordinary wasps.

However, among the bites of all insects, it is the wasp sting that is reasonably considered one of the most dangerous - in some countries of the world, more people die from wasp stings than from attacks by any other wild animals and insects in the region.

It is interesting

The most painful bites of all insects belong to the South American bullet ants. On a special scale of stinging strength, the bite of this ant has an index of 4+. In second place on the pedestal are the bites of road wasps that hunt poisonous spiders - they have an index of 4. And in third place - with an index of 3 - are paper wasps that are familiar to all of us. Their bites are approximately equal in pain to the bites of the largest predatory bugs.

The photo below shows a road wasp, the bites of which are very, very painful:

And in this photo you can see an ordinary paper wasp:

Despite the incredible pain, wasp stings are not dangerous for this reason.Although the main goal of the insect itself in defense is precisely to inflict pain on a potential enemy to scare him away, the threat to human health is determined primarily by the possibility of developing an allergic reaction to the toxins contained in the poison.

Wasp venom is the strongest allergen that causes extensive local swelling in most people. However, if a wasp sting happens to a person who is particularly sensitive to insect toxins, then the likelihood of developing much more serious allergic reactions will be quite high.

Such an immune response of the body of the victim in some cases can even lead to death; and due to the fact that in some countries there are a large number of wasp attacks, it is precisely such cases that form the sad statistics.

In the photo - a wasp sting during a normal reaction of the body to it:

And this photo shows signs of a severe allergy with severe swelling:

It is interesting

The most dangerous member of the Real wasp family is the giant Asian hornet that lives in Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and China. The poison of this insect is very strong and allergenic, the amount of it that enters the body of the victim after a bite is quite large, and the hornet itself often stings several times in one attack. All this leads to the fact that in Japan alone, about 40 people die from the bites of these large wasps every year.

The Japanese huge hornet (an endemic subspecies of the Asian) is shown in the photo below:

In addition to its toxicity, the wasp sting has a number of other interesting features. So, for example, wasps always easily take out their sting from their victim’s skin, so it’s useless to look for their “weapon” at the site of the bite. This, by the way, distinguishes a wasp sting from a bee sting.

 

Action of wasp venom

One of the main defining features of wasp venom is the large number of active ingredients in it. Each of them is responsible for a particular reaction in the affected area, but at the same time complements and greatly enhances the action of the other. That is why the overall effect of a wasp sting is much stronger than the simple total effect of the various components of the poison.

So, when a wasp stings, acetylcholine as part of its toxin causes severe irritation of the nerve endings in the tissues damaged by the poison. For humans, this means a sharp pain that occurs almost immediately, even before the wasp has time to remove its sting.

The histamine contained in the poison enhances the action of acetylcholine and stimulates the development of an allergic reaction. It is he who is one of the culprits for the appearance of edema and inflammation at the site of the bite.

The "destroyers" of damaged tissue cells are phospholipases. They start the process of outpouring the contents of cells into the intercellular space and thereby cause inflammation - a protective reaction of the body, aimed at utilizing both the toxins themselves and the already unnecessary contents of the cells.

Phospholipases also destroy mast cells in the affected tissues, which are a kind of reservoirs of their own histamine. As a result, this substance enters the bloodstream in large quantities and is a secondary cause of allergies - moreover, stronger than from histamine of the wasp venom itself.

When the cytotoxins contained in the poison come into contact with small blood vessels, their walls are destroyed, and, as a result, hemorrhage occurs.If the wasp stings on the arm or leg, this manifests itself in the form of small subcutaneous hematomas (bruises), but with multiple bites, very life-threatening internal hemorrhages become possible.

On a note

One of the toxins in wasp venom, mastoparan, is specific to these insects. Its main action lies directly in the destruction of mast cells and the release of histamine. However, there is an unusual dependence - in large quantities, it prevents the development of inflammation - natural in such cases. As for the wasp venom, it contains mastoparan in quantities sufficient to trigger an allergic reaction, but too small to prevent the development of inflammation.

The photo shows a typical inflammation at the site of a wasp sting:

In addition to the above, there are additional consequences of a wasp sting, namely:

• an increase in blood sugar levels, which is very dangerous for diabetics;
• increase in cardiac output;
• lowering blood pressure;
• quickening of breathing.

As a rule, these symptoms are less pronounced compared to tissue damage and a local or general allergic reaction, so they are often simply not noticed by the victims.

It is interesting

Modern scientists are trying to use the cytotoxins contained in wasp venom to create a cure for cancer: it has been noticed that these substances are able to quickly destroy cancer cells. Today, the scientific challenge is to make cytotoxins selectively affect the tumor, but not affect healthy cells and tissues.

 

Consequences of wasp stings

All the processes described above occur at the micro level, and in most cases the victims do not care at all - they pay attention only to those bite manifestations that are clearly visible to the naked eye.

So, the first thing that a person feels (and cannot help noticing) when a wasp stings is severe pain. It arises at the moment when the sting of the insect has not yet been taken out of the body of the victim, and goes on the rise, becoming more and more sharp with time.

Further, the bitten person feels more and more new symptoms, such as:

• redness at the site of the bite, which occurs already in the first minutes after the wasp introduces its venom;
• swelling and edema, developing 1-3 minutes after stinging and gradually increasing in size (it is thanks to them that the wasp sting looks like a big red bump);
• itching, which always accompanies pain and is usually present a little longer than the pain itself (often a wasp sting is very itchy).

With a normal reaction of the body to a bite, the sting of a wasp is usually limited to these consequences. Clearly visible redness quickly subsides, and swelling of the usual skin color remains at the site of the bite.

In the photo - a wasp sting just a few minutes after the sting:

Review

“I don’t understand why these wasps are so afraid. Yes, they bite painfully, but not fatally, after a day this bite generally disappears. I was recently stung at work by one of these - so what? I washed it with cold water, put a bottle from the refrigerator and by the end of the shift forgot where I had bitten. So, the bump was small, and that's all. Of course, if you start squeezing, smearing, injecting something there, it will swell from the drugs themselves. My mother-in-law was like that.She drank three pills, and kept some lotions, and this whole thing was blown to half an arm. And then it took almost a week.

Yaroslav, Yaroslavl

The photo below shows what a wasp sting might look like a day after the sting:

A small amount of rashes on the skin in the area of ​​​​the bite is also considered a normal reaction, and if the bite fell on the joint area, a slight tremor in it is also allowed.

The development of more serious allergy symptoms is much less common. These include:

• swelling far beyond the bite site;
• copious - all over the body - urticaria;
• nausea, fever;
• headaches and abdominal pain, dizziness;
• angioedema;
• anaphylactic shock.

It is very important to understand that there is no single norm for the manifestation of allergy symptoms in different people: in some, they develop only a few hours after the bite, while in others - almost instantly, within a few seconds. It is in the latter cases that a wasp sting poses the maximum danger, since the victim may simply not have time to provide the necessary assistance in time.

Wasp stings in certain parts of the body can be an increased danger. For example, a bite to the tongue, throat, neck or nose can lead to strangulation of the victim, a sting in the genitals can make it impossible to urinate, and a bite to the eye sometimes ends in cataracts, glaucoma, atrophy of the iris and other very serious consequences.

The photo below shows what a wasp sting looks like, complicated by extensive edema:

Review

“I have always treated wasps with some disdain. Probably because they often bit me as a child, and I just got used to it.Last summer, I just saw a woman on the beach get stung by a wasp, she lost consciousness after five minutes, I guess. At first I wanted to laugh, I thought - it’s necessary, from fear to faint. And then, when she came up, she saw how her face was swollen, her whole neck, her eyes were swollen. It can be seen that she has a high sensitivity. The ambulance came and took her away, and I don't know how it all ended. Therefore, if a wasp bites, it all depends on your body.

Tatiana, Astrakhan

 

Multiple wasp stings and their danger

Multiple bites of wasps deserve a separate discussion. If a person is bitten by several insects at the same time, the effect of the effects of bites on the body increases in proportion to their number.

For people with a normal reaction to wasp venom, even 5-6 insect stings do not pose a threat to life. The only thing is that they can be accompanied by abundant subcutaneous hemorrhages, if they occur in approximately the same place (there will be a huge bruise).

On a note

The lethal dose of wasp venom for a person who does not have a pronounced sensitivity to the toxin of this insect is 30-40 mg of poison per 1 kg of body weight. With one bite, the wasp injects about 0.4 mg of poison into the wound. That is, for an adult weighing 70 kg, approximately 700 bites will be fatal. But this is only in the absence of an allergic reaction!

The most dangerous for health, and sometimes for human life, are multiple bites of hornets - the closest relatives of ordinary wasps. Each hornet is capable of stinging its prey several times in one attack.If a whole group of insects has gathered, then their attack can eventually lead to extensive hemorrhages (including internal ones) and necrotic tissue damage.

In the photo you can see the consequences of the attack of the giant Asian hornet, which was already mentioned above:

Is it worth talking about allergy sufferers in this case, for whom single attacks are of great danger, and multiple bites of wasps and, especially, hornets, generally threaten life. It is logical that in such people the allergic reaction will be many times sharper and more serious.

 

Wasp sting: where and why it most often occurs

Despite all the danger and seeming aggressiveness of wasps, their bites are just a way of self-defense and defense invented by nature. Against insects, which wasps use as food for their larvae, poison and sting are used quite rarely. But the wasp is always ready for a meeting with a potential enemy.

Most often, wasps bite a person in the following situations:

• in nature, when he comes too close to the nest;
• in suburban areas, the owners of which may try to purposefully destroy wasp nests that interfere or accidentally touch a wasp sitting on a berry during harvest;
• in markets where they sell fruits or process fish and meat (washes here, as a rule, accidentally come across the hand of sellers or workers);
• on balconies where wasps sometimes make their nests;
• in case of accidental slamming of an insect, if it got under the clothes.

The photo below shows a nest of paper wasps. If such a design catches your eye, it should be bypassed to avoid unpleasant consequences:

In some cases, wasps attack, seemingly for no apparent reason - away from the nest.However, a detailed analysis of the situation in most cases shows that the insect was either crushed or frightened away from the feeding place, which is why it mistook the person for the offender.

Be that as it may, wasps never attack a person to feed - they have a completely different "nature". Each of their bites occurs only as part of self-defense, albeit not always understandable to a person..

 

What to do with a wasp sting?

In conclusion, let's talk about what to do if a wasp has bitten. To minimize the consequences, you need to take a few simple steps.

1. Try to suck the poison out of the wound. It is to suck out, and not to squeeze out, because when pressed, blood circulation increases at the site of the bite, and the poison will spread even faster under the skin.
2. Have time to neutralize at least part of the poison with any available acid - table vinegar, citric acid, a piece of orange or apple. This should be done as quickly as possible, because the wound at the site of the wasp sting heals very quickly.
3. Apply a cold compress to the wound - ice, meat from the freezer, a bottle of water.

All these manipulations will help reduce the size of the edema and the strength of the manifestation of other symptoms.

If the victim has the first signs of an allergy (for example, the general condition worsens, the temperature rises, shortness of breath and chest pain appear), he needs to drink Suprastin or Diphenhydramine and immediately see a doctor. Every lost minute in this situation can cost a life!

In general, it is much easier to simply prevent wasp stings. To do this, it is enough to be as attentive and accurate as possible in nature - to inspect the place where you plan to sit down, carefully pick berries and fruits, and if you find a cluster of wasps or their nests, slowly and quietly leave.

In no case do not slap on an insect that just sat on your arm or leg. If the wasp is not going to fly away by itself, it is enough to pry it off with a sheet of paper and let it go - most likely, it will take the opportunity to retreat and the incident will be settled.

 

About the danger of wasp and bee stings (including anaphylactic shock)

 

An example of how a wasp sting almost turned out to be fatal to humans

 

Details about allergies to insect bites and first aid rules for the victim