Lyme Science Blog

Bilateral Facial Palsy in Children: Rare Lyme Disease Sign A 10-year-old boy in southeastern Canada developed bilateral facial palsy—paralysis affecting both sides of his face simultaneously—after a summer fever and rash. This rare presentation (less than 2% of facial palsy cases) signals serious underlying systemic disease requiring urgent intervention. Initial treatment with methylprednisolone and IVIG […]

Guardado and Sergent describe a case that illustrates a common diagnostic gap: a 10-year-old girl with progressive right knee swelling was initially evaluated for other causes before Lyme arthritis was confirmed. The delay occurred despite the child having documented tick exposure nine months earlier. The mother initially denied a tick bite history, but focused questioning

A 48-year-old woman with multiple sclerosis presented to her primary care physician with fever and sore throat. Three weeks later, she returned with photophobia, eye pressure sensation, blurry vision, pain with eye movements, and central scotoma. A scotoma is a blurry or blind spot in the visual field while surrounding areas appear normal. MRI and

A recently published study by Sowula and colleagues provides further evidence that Lyme disease can trigger vertigo and hearing loss. In their article “Vertigo as one of the symptoms of Lyme disease,” the authors examine the frequency of vertigo symptoms and potential labyrinth damage in patients with diagnosed Lyme disease.4 The study included 38 patients

Moon et al. explored the risk factors for disseminated Lyme disease using an electronic database from the Geisinger integrated health care system located in Pennsylvania. They based their data on both diagnostic and narrative text data. One out of three of their disseminated Lyme disease cases were classified as disseminated cases. “Lyme arthritis was the

The authors cited earlier research by Solomon and colleagues on the role of prior trauma in Lyme disease.²  “The investigators noted that patients who reported a higher number of lifetime traumatic events (i.e., a higher trauma score) at initial presentation were more likely to report a painful, disabling symptom course at follow-up.” Mustafiz and colleagues

A 10-year-old boy presented with fatigue, posterior lower neck pain, and a low-grade fever of 100.8. “The soft tissues of the posterior neck and upper back were tender with allodynia,” wrote Baker and colleagues in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.² They added, the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of the cervical spine showed “questionable” nerve

In an earlier study by Woolf and colleagues, nearly 1 in 5 children (19.6%) children with an erythema migrans (EM) rash or a positive two-tier Lyme serology had EKG evidence of carditis. Twenty-four of the children had atrioventricular (11.2%). Their study did not report troponin levels.¹ High-sensitivity cardiac troponin assays have been used to identify

As more individuals begin to venture outside with warmer weather, there are often concerns over how to protect yourself from ticks. Researchers have examined not only the effectiveness of various repellents and protective clothing but also the behavior of individuals who are more likely to encounter ticks.Researchers in Indiana looked at the protective measures used

In their study, “Transmission patterns of tick-borne pathogens among birds and rodents in a forested park in southeastern Canada,” Dumas et al. “investigated and compared the role of breeding birds to rodents in local transmission dynamics of B. burgdorferi s.s., A. phagocytophilum and B. miyamotoi, which are emerging pathogens in southeastern Canada.”¹ Researchers collected ticks and rodents from the Mont Saint-Bruno National Park