Lyme Science Blog

A 26-year-old man was admitted to the hospital with flu-like symptoms, syncope and exhibited third-degree atrioventricular heart block. He had experienced 3 episodes of syncope overnight and reported having a mild cough and congestion for several weeks prior to his admission. The man had a tick bite one month earlier while visiting his family in […]

In their article, “An analysis of companion animal tick encounters as revealed by photograph-based crowdsourced data,” Kopsco and colleagues found, “The percentage of reports of ticks found on companion animals is more than doubled in the fall and winter seasons from what was reported in the spring and summer seasons.”¹ Between January 1, 2014 and December

Since the species was first identified 7 years ago, there have been only 7 reported cases of Lyme disease caused by Borrelia mayonii. In Open Forum Infectious Diseases Correspondence, McGowan and colleagues describe the recent case of a Borrelia mayonii infection in a 51-year-old man from northern Minnesota. The case is featured in a Letter

The case involved a 46-year-old man with Lyme disease who presented to the clinic with cardiac complications, which initially manifest as palpitations. The patient lived in a Lyme endemic region and reported that one month earlier, he had a “pinching sensation in his right thigh with an associated macular erythematous rash,” according to the authors.

In their 2007 article, “Do Bartonella Infections Cause Agitation, Panic Disorder, and Treatment-Resistant Depression?” Schaller and colleagues describe 3 patients with acute psychiatric symptoms associated with Bartonella-like sign and symptoms.¹ Each of the patients was exposed to ticks or fleas and manifest symptoms consistent with Bartonella, i.e., an enlarged lymph node near an Ixodes tick bite and

Rocky Mountain spotted fever has primarily been reported in 5 states in the United States, according to the CDC. These include Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and North Carolina. However, RMSF has been documented in other states, as well. The disease can be transmitted by various ticks depending upon the region. In the eastern U.S., it’s

In their article “A Longitudinal Study of a Large Clinical Cohort of Patients with Lyme Disease and Tick-Borne Co-Infections Treated with Combination Antibiotics” Xi and colleagues looked at 140 individuals who tested positive for tick-borne infections (TBI) with 33% of those patients infected with multiple TBIs.¹ The authors found that out of the 140 participants:

Over the last several years, there has been a three-fold increase in the number of anaplasmosis cases in the United States. The tick-borne illness can be transmitted through the bite of an infected blacklegged (deer) tick and causes flu-like symptoms, similar to those seen in Lyme disease. Anaplasmosis has only rarely been associated with cardiac

“A suspected case of Lyme disease causing complete heart block,” by Isha and colleagues describes a unique case of Lyme carditis in a 21-year-old man, in which symptoms emerged early on in the disease. “Although such manifestations occur late, our case report describes an interesting case where the patient developed a complete heart block in

In this case report, the authors describe a 33-year-old man with Lyme neuroborreliosis, who was initially diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome based on his clinical, radiographic and neurodiagnostic test results. Guillain-Barré Syndrome “can range from a very mild case with brief weakness to nearly devastating paralysis, leaving you unable to breathe independently.”1 GBS typically develops after