Lyme Science Blog

A 73-year-old man was admitted to the hospital with a 16-day history of confusion and intermittent headaches. He was an avid gardener and reportedly had tick bites in the past but none that he noticed in the weeks prior to his symptoms. Initially, he developed “right-sided facial droop and associated numbness, confusion, and word-finding difficulties,” […]

“The patient reported that a typical episode occurred approximately 5 to 8 hours after the ingestion of a beef product,” wrote the authors. “Symptoms consisted of increased heart rate to 170–180 beats per minute, skin redness, lightheadedness, blurred vision, and shortness of breath.” The man experienced 9 of these episodes over a 4-year period. Each

The woman presented with fever, myalgias, diarrhea, and a dry cough. The authors discuss the risk of premature closure in such cases. “Premature closure refers to forming a conclusion and stopping the diagnostic assessment too early in the diagnostic process, in which case alternative possibilities may not be explored and the wrong diagnosis may be

The patient was born at 36 5/7 weeks by C-section. At five-weeks-old the newborn presented to the emergency department with pallor, increased lethargy and difficulty feeding. The newborn was “more difficult to arouse and very pale compared to her twin brother,” the mother reported. In additionally, “She was feeding with a similar frequency, however, with

The first confirmed case of LB [Lyme borreliosis] in a pregnant woman was described in 1985 in a 28-year- old mother who was infected with LB in the first trimester and delivered her baby at 35 weeks, the authors explained, based on a paper by Schlesinger et al.² “The mother developed symptoms consistent with LB

A 36-year-old man was hospitalized in 2019 due to unexplained fevers he had been having for two weeks. He was later diagnosed with Babesia with 8.5% of his blood showing the parasite. He had been diagnosed with granulomatosis with polyangiitis in 2001 and was considered immunocompromised related to treatment 2 years earlier with rituximab, a

In their study, Wormser and colleagues found that 6 of the 11 Lyme disease patients (54.5%) suffered from facial nerve dysfunction an average of 13.1 months following the onset of treatment with corticosteroids.¹ 52-year-old man with “tearing of left eye when eating (Bogorad’s syndrome); mild residual weakness left side.” 51-year-old man with “mild residual left

“A 5-year-old male with National Cancer Institute (NCI) standard risk B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), in remission and receiving standard maintenance chemotherapy, was admitted to another hospital with fever, emesis, diarrhea, headache, and lethargy in July,” wrote Ungar. The child had been diagnosed 32 months earlier with B-ALL and remained in complete remission following induction

According to the authors, the woman experienced a “sudden onset of severe, lancinating headache in the distribution of the fifth cranial nerve bilaterally.”¹ She had been treated for Lyme disease two months earlier following a tick bite and a rash on her torso. She had since been bitten by a non-engorged tick. Her neurologic exam

Less than 2% of facial palsy cases are bilateral.¹ “Unlike unilateral facial palsy, it is often caused by a serious underlying systemic disease and therefore warrants urgent medical intervention,” wrote Yang and Dalal in their article “Bilateral Facial Palsy: A Clinical Approach.”² “A previously healthy 10-year-old boy presented in late August with a one-day history