Lyme disease is a multisystem inflammatory disease caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi and transmitted by the bite of an infected ixodid tick endemic to Northeastern, North Central, and Pacific coastal regions of the U.S. The disease is characterized by stages, beginning with localized infection of the skin (erythema migrans), followed by dissemination to many sites. Manifestations of...

Introduction. Lyme disease is an emerging worldwide infectious disease with major foci of endemicity in North America and regions of temperate Eurasia. The erythema migrans rash associated with early infection is found in approximately 80% of patients and can have a range of appearances including the classic target bull's-eye lesion and nontarget appearing lesions. Methods. A survey was designe...

BACKGROUND Current laboratory markers do not readily detect acute Lyme disease. We assessed the utility of complement and its split products as markers of Lyme disease in patients shortly after a tick bite. METHODS Thirty-one consecutive acute Lyme disease patients, 14 with and 17 without erythema migrans (EM) skin rash, seen by a physician within 96 h of a tick bite were matched with 24 cons...

PURPOSE Symptoms of urinary bladder detrusor dysfunction have been rarely reported in Lyme disease. The aim was to carry out the first systematic study to compare the prevalence of such symptoms in a group of Lyme disease patients and a group of matched controls. METHODS A questionnaire relating to detrusor function was administered to 17 serologically positive Lyme disease patients and to 18...

BACKGROUND There is little information about the long-term outcomes of children with facial nerve palsy attributable to Lyme disease, a group putatively at high risk for poor neurologic outcomes. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to assess the long-term neuropsychologic and health outcomes of children with facial nerve palsy attributable to Lyme disease. METHODS We conducted a matched ...

The term "chronic Lyme disease" is used by some health care providers as a diagnosis for various constitutional, musculoskeletal, and neuropsychiatric symptoms (1,2). Patients with a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease have been provided a wide range of medications as treatment, including long courses of intravenous (IV) antibiotics (3,4). Studies have not shown that such treatments lead to subst...

A murine IgM monoclonal antibody (MA-2C6) with κ-light chains directed against an antigenic determinant of outer surface protein A (OspA) of the Lyme disease spirochete, Borreliaburgdorferi, is produced. This antibody could bind specifically to OspA antigen of several isolates of B. burgdorferi, but not to the non-Lyme disease bacteria such as T. pallidum and B. hermsii. Antibody MA-2C6 was pur...

Objective: We examined the blood of 48 North American Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) patients subsequently diagnosed with Lyme Disease Borrelia burgdorferi and compared these to 50 North American CFS patients without evidence of Borrelia burgdorferi infections for presence of Mycoplasma spp. co-infections using forensic polymerase chain reaction. Results: We found that 68.75% of CFS/Lyme patien...

Internet search engines have become an increasingly popular resource for accessing health-related information. The key words used as well as the number and geographic location of searches can provide trend data, as have recently been made available by Google Trends. We report briefly on exploring this resource using Lyme disease as an example because it has well-described seasonal and geographi...

Ehrlichia chaffeensis and E. ewingii, causal agents of human ehrlichiosis, and has demonstrated marked geographic expansion in recent years. A. americanum ticks often outnumber the vector of Lyme disease, Ixodes scapularis, where both ticks are sympatric, yet cases of Lyme disease far exceed ehrlichiosis cases. We quantified the risk for Relative Risk for Ehrlichiosis and Lyme Disease in an Are...