Lyme Science Blog

Lyme carditis and heart failure A 52-year-old woman from Pennsylvania developed symptoms over a two-week period that included shortness of breath, fever, chills, fatigue, and joint pain with stiffness. She also reported dizziness and intermittent pre-syncope, described as near-fainting episodes. “Echocardiography demonstrated new-onset mildly depressed left ventricular systolic dysfunction,” the authors report. “Interestingly, coronary CTA […]

What are co-infections? Co-Infections of Lyme Disease In this video, we explore what co-infections are, including co-infections of Lyme disease, and how they can affect people battling this condition. Lyme disease, caused by the bite of an infected tick, can sometimes come with other infections, known as co-infections. These co-infections, like Bartonella, Babesia, and Ehrlichia,

Powassan Encephalitis: Young Boy Develops It After Camping Trip Powassan encephalitis can be transmitted within 15 minutes of tick attachment and carries a 10-15% fatality rate with up to 50% of survivors experiencing long-term neurologic damage. A 9-year-old boy developed life-threatening Powassan encephalitis one week after returning from a camping trip in northern Ontario, presenting

Is It Lyme Disease? Unexpected Symptoms of Lyme disease Case Study: Unexplained Foot Pain One of my patients experienced severe foot pain, even while walking to the bathroom. A podiatrist diagnosed him with plantar fasciitis, and he tried various treatments including icing, NSAIDs, stretching, iontophoresis, shoe inserts, and cortisone injections. Despite these efforts, his foot

Why Treating Lyme Disease Is More Complex Than You Think By 1990, I had started prescribing intravenous ceftriaxone (Rocephin), based on emerging reports of its effectiveness in chronic neurologic Lyme disease. This adjustment was influenced by reports from doctors Dr. Logigian, Kaplan, and Steere, who documented the treatment of chronic neurologic Lyme disease cases. I

Why Treating Lyme Disease Is More Complex Than You Think My patient took a “bury-your-head-in-the-sand” approach towards Lyme disease, which did not help him. He had been ill for more than 2 years, suffering from severe fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep, headaches, poor concentration, irritability, neck pain, chest pain, palpitations, stomach pains, and joint pain.

Rifampin for Lyme Disease: When Doxycycline Isn’t Enough When I first began treating Lyme disease in 1987, the primary antibiotic prescribed was doxycycline. This choice was driven by doxycycline’s effectiveness not only against Lyme disease itself but also against co-infections such as Ehrlichia and Anaplasmosis. These co-infections, often transmitted by the same ticks that carry

TMJ arthritis triggered by Lyme disease In the article, “Acute arthritis of the right temporomandibular joint due to Lyme disease: a case report and literature review,” the authors describe a 25-year-old patient who presented to a medical center with acute pain in the right temporomandibular joint and mouth opening disorders.¹ Over a 5-year period, the

Can you get ticks from pets? Yes, and according to a study by Jones et al. owning indoor-outdoor pets increases your risk of being bitten by a tick and potentially exposing yourself to various tick-borne diseases. [1] Out of the 1,546 homes with pets, 88.1% used some form of tick control on their pets. Yet,

Dissociative amnesia in a patient with post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome Investigators describe the case of a 41-year-old patient, diagnosed with post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS), who, in addition to exhibiting typical PTLDS symptoms, also showed a severe retrograde episodic-autobiographical and semantic amnesia. In 2015, the patient exhibited weakness and loss of energy, psychomotor slowing, night