Lyme Science Blog

A 14-year-old boy diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder showed substantial improvement in cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms following treatment for Lyme disease and Bartonella. Offutt and Breitschwerdt describe this case in a recent report: academic testing improved from special education level to tenth grade level, oppositional behavior resolved, and the patient was eventually accepted into a […]

The boy presented with fatigue, posterior lower neck pain, and a low-grade temperature of 100.8 for one day. There was no history of a tick bite, erythema migrans rash, or Bell’s palsy suggestive of Lyme disease. There was pain in the soft tissues of the posterior neck and upper back. An MRI of the cervical

In their article, “Ten-year-old Omani Girl with Lyme Arthritis,” Mughaizwi and colleagues describe a young child who had lived in the United States for 5 years before moving to Oman.¹ One year after her return to Oman, she developed symptoms of Lyme arthritis. “We report a 10-year-old girl who presented with acute arthritis of the

In this case report, “Exacerbation of Osteoarthritic Joint Pain by Lyme Disease,” Bennani and colleagues demonstrate the importance in identifying an underlying tick-borne infection, as appropriate treatment can dramatically improve a patient’s quality of life.¹ A 63-year-old man, who was wheelchair-bound, presented to his clinician’s office with severe pain in both knees, which had been

Lyme disease is typically associated with flu-like symptoms or neurologic complications, but infection with Borrelia burgdorferi can also cause problems with your eyes. In their article, “Co-infectious Uveitis With Syphilis and Lyme Disease: A Case Report,” Mandal and colleagues describe what they believe is the first documented case of a patient with concurrent co-infection of

After 37 years treating Lyme disease, I’ve seen atypical skin rashes misdiagnosed as shingles, cellulitis, or necrotizing fasciitis when Lyme disease was the cause. Suzuki and colleagues describe a case that illustrates this pattern of misdiagnosis: a 43-year-old woman who was an avid gardener and lived in Wisconsin developed pink papules behind her right knee.

A 74-year-old woman had been hospitalized four times over a period of three months. During these admissions, she was treated with antibiotics for a urinary tract infection, states Rosendahl and colleagues in their article “Lyme neuroborreliosis with encephalitis: A rare case.”¹ On her last admission, the woman exhibited confusion, paranoid delusions, a weight loss of

“Our case emphasizes that Lyme disease is capable of causing a mix of symptoms, which may be difficult to interpret, leading to a delay in diagnosis,” the authors write. And these symptoms may “develop consecutively further obscuring the clinical picture”—making this mix of symptoms an important Lyme disease symptom pattern to recognize. A 69-year-old male