Lyme Disease Essay

One of the more common pests located in the Northeastern United States is the Black Legged Tick (Ixodes scapularis). More commonly known as the “Deer Tick” this animal primarily inhabits wooded areas populated by warm-blooded wildlife. Specifically the temperate Pine Barrens in Southern New Jersey, which hosts the 2nd largest tick population in the country (CDC, 2010), the black legged tick is a common pest that spreads lyme disease. This disease is a bacterial infection caused by the tick latching onto a host and feeding for an extended period of time. These ticks attach to most warm blooded woodland creatures and any human beings unfortunate enough to get close enough.

According to Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt (a world renowned Lyme expert), Lyme disease is considered the plague of the century due to the large number of people with chronic Lyme disease and the associated co-infections. The number one symptom of Lyme is chronic fatigue. People can have Lyme for a very long time and not be properly diagnosed because current laboratory testing comes up short with being able to detect it. One of the main reasons for this is because chronic Lyme does not live in the blood but rather in the tissues. It is an intracellular organism meaning it lives inside the cell. Lyme has different shapes: spirochete (like a spring), cyst with a hard shell, and acellular (without an outer cell membrane). Lyme likes to set up a sanctuary in the body such as in the brain, teeth (such as under a root canal or in a cavitation), vertebrae, breast tissue, and lymph nodes. It looks for a place where it can be protected and the body is vulnerable preferably in fatty tissue or under a biofilm. While traditionally Lyme disease is considered a tick-borne disease, recent findings have discovered that it is an insect-borne disease that can get transferred

Signs and symptoms of Lyme disease may occur within a couple days after being bitten, but it can also take up to a month before symptoms develop. Your family caregiver should diagnose you Lyme disease, they will begin by asking you about your signs and symptoms. They will then check your skin for any unusual rashes and or attached ticks. During this you should make sure you tell your caregiver if you have removed a tick or have been in an area that ticks may live, such as sagebrush or wooded areas. Your caregiver may diagnose you with Lyme disease on the spot, but chances are you will have to be put through further testing. Testing can range from blood tests, lumbar puncture commonly known as spinal taps, and synovial fluid tests, which is the fluid that surrounds your joints. After being diagnosed, treatment for Lyme disease can be simple as taking medicine. Medicines can include antibiotics that kill the germs that causes the disease, anti-inflammatories that decrease pain and swelling, or steroids that can also reduce pain, redness, and swelling in your joints and or

Most Lyme disease cases are very serious. The disease creates symptoms that are similar to the flu. When you first catch the disease you may experience fever, chills, sweats, muscle aches, fatigue, nausea and general pain. Very rarely, Lyme disease may be fatal depending on which strain of the disease you caught.

“Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, was first isolated in 1982 by Willy Burgdorfer, Ph.D., a zoologist and microbiologist at NIAID’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Montana.” (NIAID, 2008.) Dr. Burgdorfer at the time was studying Rocky Mountain Fever in attempt to help Jorge Benach, Ph.D., discover why more than 100 spotted fever cases occurred in New York between 1971 and 1976. “Dr. Benach, of the New York State Department of Health had been a source of American dog ticks for Burgdorfer to study.” (NIAID, 2008.)

“Lyme disease got its name from where it was first discovered in Lyme, Connecticut in 1975” (healthychildren.org). “Since then there has been thousands of cases reported of the disease. The ticks live in low and high seasonal temperatures and high humidity” (healthychildren.org). Lyme Disease most common to occur in the Northeast, North-central states, or West Coast. On behalf of the Northeast, I can tell you that ticks are everywhere in this region. They like to live in tall grasses and woody areas. “The small insects more than often latch onto the foot or lower leg and crawl up the body, and travel up the body with a destination of the head. On their normal hosts, ticks also usually crawl up; they want to blood feed around the

Lyme’s disease is a disease that is transmitted to humans when an infected tick bites the human’s skin. According to Lymedisease.org, “Symptoms of early Lyme disease may present as a flu-like illness (fever, chills, sweats, muscle aches, fatigue, nausea and joint pain). Some patients have a rash or Bell’s palsy (facial drooping). However, although a rash shaped like a bull’s-eye is considered characteristic of Lyme disease, many people develop a different kind of Lyme rash or none at all.” Lyme disease can be difficult to diagnose because its symptoms mimic so many other disorders, especially if a rash is not present. Lymedisease.org, also reports that only “42% of cases had a rash”. Furthermore, lymedisease.org goes on to report that, “Many Lyme symptoms, such as fatigue, cognitive impairment, joint pain, poor sleep, mood problems, muscle pain, and neurological presentations also occur in other diseases. Hence, the symptoms of Lyme disease significantly overlap those of chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, depression and Alzheimer’s disease. Many Lyme patients report being misdiagnosed with a different condition before being properly diagnosed with Lyme disease.”

Thesis Statement: “According to the Center of Disease Control, Lyme disease is the most commonly reported vector borne illness in the United States”(Lyme Disease: Data and statistics, 2016).

bodily functions, especially in the nervous system (1). It occurs because of the effect of bacterial infection, a Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria, which is blood-borne to a person by infectious ticks (1). The disease is more common in North America and Europe, especially in wilderness areas and grassland (1). Lyme disease is classified into phases according to the speed and the extent of the infection in the body. Early diagnosis and treatment prevent the patient from reaching the late phase, so it is important to be aware of the two phases of Lyme disease, which are the early disease phase that has two stages, and the late disease phase.

Lyme borreliosis or Lyme disease can be devastating both physically and mentally for victims. The disease is transmitted by a vector, specifically a tick, which infects their host by biting and infecting them with pathological spirochete bacteria known as Borrelia burgdorferi (Muschart & Blommaert, 2015). There are several species of Borrelia globally, and as a group, the bacteria are referred to as Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (Pearson, 2015). The disease originated from, Lyme Connecticut, of which it was named, after a patient was mistakenly diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when the cause of their disease was B. burgdorferi or Lyme disease (Snow, 2013). Lyme disease is classified as one of the most common and growing vector-born disease in the United States as well as Europe (Snow, 2013). Understanding how Lyme disease progresses through the body as well as the disease’s signs and symptoms are essential to understanding how to treat the disease and stop it from spreading throughout the body with destructive results. With a disease as potentially devastating as Lyme disease, early treatment is required for a better outcome (Pearson, 2015). This research paper will discuss the pathophysiology of three Lyme conditions known as Lyme arthritis, Lyme neuroborreliosis, and Lyme carditis and provide an overview of the signs and symptoms of Lyme disease and treatments, and how to prevent infection.

Lyme disease, or lyme borreliosis, is an emerging infectious disease transmitted by ticks. Lyme disease is considered an emerging infectious disease because it’s incidence has increased over the past 20 years, and it was not identified until 1975 in the United States (CITE). Lyme disease is the most commonly reported vector-borne disease in the United States. Lyme disease causes symptoms similar to that of influenza, and includes headache, chills, fever, lethargy, and muscle pain in the initial stages. A bulls-eye shaped rash at the site of the tick bite can also occur in those infected, but not all infected persons develop the rash. The rash typically develops three to thirty days after the person is bitten. Later

Using extra caution to avoid ticks during the months April through August is recommended by covering up and wearing pants and long sleeves if going hiking or spending time near wooded areas. Using bug spray with Deet is good protection. Inspect yourself when coming inside and shower. Also, inspect pets before letting them

The disease can affect a human’s skin, joint, neurologic and/or cardiac manifestations. Early Lyme is 2 to 30 days prior to the tick bite, which includes fever, chills, headache, fatigue, muscle and joint aches, and swollen nodes. Late Lyme would be weeks to years after the tick bite, which include episodes of dizziness or shortness of breath and problems with short-term memory. Early Lyme can be treated with antibiotics and late Lyme can be treated with IV antibiotics. In the absence of neurologic or cardiac symptoms, treatment recommendations for adults would be a 14-day course of oral antibiotics. Doxycyline 100 mg twice daily is the preferred treatment; alternatively, amoxicillin 500 mg three times daily or cefuroxime axetil 500 mg twice daily may be prescribed (History of Lyme Disease | Bay Area Lyme Foundation. n.d.). The most common diagnostic tests for Lyme disease are indirect ones. Two-tiered testing uses two tests. The first is a screening test that should detect anyone who might have the disease. Tests that do this well have are regarded as having high sensitivity. This test is followed by a second test that is intended to make sure that only people with the disease are diagnosed. Tests that do this well have high specificity (Lyme disease is a clinical diagnosis, based on your medical history, symptoms and exposure to ticks. n.d.). Diagnose of Lyme can be difficult to detect because

Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne illness in the world. This disease has been reported in all 50 states, mainly the New England states (Khatchikian, 2015). Lyme disease has also been reported in China, parts of the Soviet Union, Europe, Japan, and Australia. In 1957, a group of children and adults in the Lyme, Connecticut area, and surrounding areas had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (Shiel, William C). Dr. Allen Steere began researching to solve this problem. Steere identified the Lyme disease was transferred by ticks (BayAreaLyme.com).

Zoonotic diseases, diseases that can be passed between animals and humans, are very common and pose a significant threat to public health. Strategies to address health threats of Lyme disease, the most prevalent tick-spread disease in the northern hemisphere, often have only modest success due to an inclination to focus on the white-footed mouse, Peromyscus leucopus, as the primary host for ticks and the primary reservoir for the Lyme disease bacterium B. burgdorferi ss. Brisson and colleagues examined how shrews can play an even more important role as the primary host and reservoir than mice. Their findings suggest that the most successful Lyme disease mitigation approaches will be those that target multiple host species.1 Shrews have high reservoir potential, which makes them a primary host of Lyme disease and allows them to contribute significantly to the Lyme disease epidemic. Brisson et