| Lyme Disease |
| Introduction |
Etiological agent = Borrelia burgdorferi (a gram [-] spirochete)
(Click here for a photo of Borrelia burgdorferi)
Lyme disease (LD) is a tickborne disease. The etiologic agent, Borrelia burgdorferi, is not directly transmitted from animals to humans, but by harboring infected ticks, domestic animals may increase the chances for human exposure.
Background:
Lyme disease was first diagnosed among a group of children in Lyme, CT in 1975. Astute parents and pediatricians realized that it was very unusual to have a large number of cases of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (the initial erroneous diagnosis) in a limited geographic area. They pushed public health officials and researchers to pursue a different etiology.
Lyme disease has now been diagnosed in all 48 states in the continental U.S. (some cases are due to travel to endemic states) and throughout the world, although the specific tick vectors and strains of Borrelia vary somewhat from one region to another. In addition, strain-related differences in clinical presentations may also occur.
Lyme disease is the most common tickborne disease in the U.S. From 1993-1997, an average of 12,451 cases of human LD were reported to the CDC each year and in 2000, 17,730 cases were reported. (It is a reportable disease throughout the U.S., but the actual incidence is likely to be much higher in endemic areas than official reports would suggest.)
| Lyme disease topics |
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