Lyme Disease
Favorite Lyme Blog Posts
Is it Long COVID or Lyme disease?
When It’s Not Long COVID—It’s Lyme In the wake of the pandemic, we’ve become more aware of how a virus can lead to long-term, multisystem illness. That’s been a...
What Is the Best Treatment for Lyme Disease?
When patients come to the office with Lyme disease, many have already been treated — yet they’re still sick. Others are newly diagnosed, overwhelmed by strange symptoms and uncertain...
Forget the Rash: These Are the First Symptoms of Lyme Disease
Patients with Lyme disease rarely walk into a clinic with the classic bull’s-eye rash or a clear memory of a tick bite. Instead, they often present with vague, nonspecific...
Does Lyme disease exist in the South?
A Patient’s Story from the South My patient from Florida looked me straight in the eye and said, “But Lyme doesn’t exist down here, right?” That’s what she’d been...
What Happens if a Tick’s Mouthparts Stay in Your Skin?
It’s not uncommon for the mouthparts of a tick to break off and remain in the skin after removal. Fortunately, this rarely increases the risk of infection, including Lyme...
Lyme Disease and Joint Pain: Is It Debris—or a Missed Persistent Infection?
New research into Lyme arthritis (joint pain due to an infection with Borrelia burgdorferi) is challenging long-standing assumptions about what causes persistent symptoms after treatment. For years, many clinicians...
Can you have neurologic Lyme disease even if your spinal tap is normal?
🧠 When a Patient Hears “Spinal Tap,” They Often Ask: “Do I really need one just to check for Lyme disease?” It’s a reasonable question. A spinal tap—more formally,...
Why I Treated Him for Lyme—Even When His Test Was Negative
Patients Deserve an Explanation One of the most common—and most important—questions I hear from patients is: “If my Lyme test is negative, why are you still treating me?” It’s...
Could Piperacillin Be the Lyme Disease Breakthrough We Need?
A recent study published in Science Translational Medicine by researchers at Northwestern University has generated cautious optimism in the Lyme disease community. The study found that an older antibiotic—piperacillin—was...