According to the authors, out of the 1454 patients referred to the center, 255 (17.5%) were 65 years and older, of which 45% were males. The average age was 79, with a range from 65 to 87 years. One-third or 33% had clinical Lyme borreliosis and positive serologic tests, compared with 18% of the younger […]
Netherlands study finds Lyme disease common in elderly Read More »
Lyme Disease Linked to Stroke in a 9-Year-Old Boy Lyme disease can occasionally cause serious neurologic complications in children. This case report describes a 9-year-old boy who developed a stroke associated with Lyme neuroborreliosis. Challenges diagnosing neurologic Lyme disease are discussed further in the Testing & Diagnosis guide. Neurologic symptoms such as dizziness, weakness, tremor,
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Asymptomatic Babesia infections may be far more common than realized. The number of individuals in the US who are unaware they are infected with Babesia could be significant. At least 300,000 people are diagnosed with Lyme disease every year in the US. And up to 40% of those with Lyme disease in the northeast have
Asymptomatic Babesia: When Healthy People Don’t Know They’re Infected Read More »
How common are tinnitus and hearing loss in Lyme disease? More common than most patients and many doctors realize. A study of 216 patients with tick-borne diseases found that three-fourths experienced ear, nose, and throat symptoms, with tinnitus being the most frequently reported. The Study: Tinnitus in 76% of Tick-Borne Disease Patients In Europe, the
Study finds hearing loss and tinnitus common in patients with tick-borne diseases Read More »
Four of the citizen scientists collectively recovered several hundred ticks over a 3-year period starting in 2014. The Saint John, New Brunswick collection process went beyond conventional flagging. “Ticks were obtained by flagging backyard vegetation with a white hand towel, removing ticks from flowers harvested in the backyard, and collecting ticks from the household cat,”
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The authors describe the quality of the sleep of Lyme disease (LD) patients who were ideally treated for an erythema migrans rash. They defined ideally treated as a 3-week course of doxycycline. Their study excluded individuals with more complicated presentations including self-reported history of prior LD, having Lyme symptoms for greater than 3 months duration,
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A woman with post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS) underwent routine dental extraction of four molars. Despite an uneventful surgery and aggressive multimodal pain management, the procedure triggered severe, widespread full-body pain that required ICU admission. Lim from the University of California in San Francisco documented this case, which illustrates the extraordinary pain vulnerability that PTLDS
“Our model predicted vector status with over 91% accuracy,” the authors state, “and identified 14 Ixodes species with high probabilities (80%) of transmitting infections from animal hosts to humans on the basis of their traits.” They found several intrinsic features that predict which tick is more likely to transmit an infection from animals to humans.
Study identifies ticks that are most dangerous to humans Read More »
Can Lyme Disease Trigger Obsessive Compulsive Symptoms? Obsessive compulsive symptoms have been reported in some patients with Lyme disease, raising questions about whether infection or immune activation could contribute to psychiatric symptoms. The CDC notes that Lyme disease can affect the nervous system, which may contribute to neurologic or psychiatric symptoms in some individuals. Study
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In their study, Buchholz and colleagues, from Western Kentucky University, found that more than half of the mice in Kentucky tested positive for Borrelia burgdorferi. They also discovered that the prevalence of B. burgdorferi was higher in tissue than in blood – a finding consistent with other studies. “Overall prevalence of B. burgdorferi in mammals
More than 50% of mice in Kentucky infected with Lyme bacteria Read More »
