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Essay on Lime Disease

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Lime Disease

Lyme disease is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi, which is a tick-borne spirochete.
The dangers of this disease became more publicised in 1977, where a geographic grouping of children in Lyme, Conneticut were thought to have juvenile rheumatoid arthritis1. Soon after, it was discovered that lyme disease was an illness that mainly affects the skin, nervous system, heart, and joints. The borrelia species is part of the eubacterial phylum of spirochetes. Containted within a protoplasmic cylinder is a cell membrane, followed by wavy flagella, and then an outer membrane. The genes encoded within the outer membrane are located on plasmids which allows the organism to make antigenic changes in these …show more content…

Secondary skin lesions may occur but are smaller and migrate less. The main symptoms include fatigue and excruciating headache, lasting only hours or days. Meningitis, poor memory, mood change, cardiac problems, and facial palsy are also very common.
They may recur or become chronic1. Six months later (on average), many patients have brief attacks of arthritis in the large joints, especially in the knee.
Stage 3 is classified as the late persistent infection, where arthritis lasts longer
(ie. months) and chronic arthritis (a year or more of joint inflammation) begins. More than a year after infection, B. burgdorferI may affect the central and peripheral nervous systems. There has been a lot of work carried out in this field, particularly where children are affected. For example, the transplacental transmission of B. burgdorferi has been reported in 2 infants whose mothers were infected with Lyme borreliosis during the first trimester of pregnancy. Both of these infants dies in their first week of life. One had encephalitis and the other had congenital cardiac malformations1. Spirochetes were seen in various fetal tissues.
Studies reviewing lyme disease in pregnant women before knowing the outcome of their

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