Lyme Science Blog

According to the authors, Lyme disease mimicked a myocardial infarction (heart attack)  in a 45-year-old woman who presented with a sudden onset of chest pain, radiating to her neck. The evidence supporting a diagnosis of myocardial infarction was strong. A medical workup showed the woman had EKG changes, high admission levels of Troponin and CK-MB, […]

In their article published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, the authors state, “Results from the physical exam and laboratory testing our sample of patients with PTLDS did not show a pattern of significant objective abnormalities.” However, “the most notable exception was the higher rate of diminished vibratory sensation on physical exam among participants with

According to Rebman and colleagues, writing in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, PTLDS is a severe complication of Lyme disease. [1] The authors identified PTLDS using the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) proposed case definition. [2] “Briefly, this definition relies on prior physician-documented Lyme disease, treatment with standard of care antibiotics, and the development

The 6-year-old girl presented with an erythema migrans (EM) rash before developing an areolar lymphocytoma involving her breast. She had recently travelled to Germany, where her parents recalled her developing an asymptomatic, annular, erythematous eruption of the right flank 1 week after a “bite,” writes Ogimi. The initial tests for Lyme disease were negative. Then,

The study included more than 1,000 children, average age of 9, who underwent evaluation for Lyme disease at 1 of the 5 participating emergency departments. The authors found that 65 out of 554 children (12%) could have been underdiagnosed. “Of the 554 children who the treating clinicians thought were unlikely to have Lyme disease (score

In the January 2018 issue of the British Medical Journal, the authors describe the case of a 61-year-old man who complained to his primary care physician and multiple emergency room personnel that he was having severe shooting pain over his scalp, neck and back. “The degree of discomfort from his hair moving was so extreme

In an effort to explore the evolutionary history of the spirochete B. burgdorferi in North America, Walter and colleagues from the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Disease at Yale University collected ticks from across the USA and southern Canada between 1984 and 2013. The authors sequenced what they believe to be the largest collection of 146

The 66-year-old man became ill within a week of being bitten by a tick on the back of his neck. One month later, he collapsed and was rendered unconscious, Sharma and colleagues explain in The American Journal of Medicine. The authors describe the case in their article “Without Further Delay: Lyme carditis.” When the man was

Researchers have conducted numerous animal sentinel studies to monitor the occurrence and spread of Lyme disease. “These studies primarily focused on ticks and associated pathogens collected from domestic dogs because of their ability to produce antibodies to B. burgdorferi, attainable travel history information, and frequency of outdoor exposure,” says Hendricks. Hendricks’ team looked at confirmed

Mice, guinea pigs, dogs, rabbits and monkeys have long been used to study B. burgdorferi infections. But given that rhesus macaques have been shown to most accurately mimic human infection and response to treatment, Embers and her team inoculated rhesus macaques with B. burgdorferi. “The use of nonhuman primates to model this disease provides the