Left untreated, late manifestations involving the joints, heart, and nervous system can occur. In most cases, the infection and its symptoms are eliminated with antibiotics, especially if diagnosis and treatment occur early in the course of illness. Late, delayed, or inadequate treatment can lead to late manifestations of Lyme disease which can be disabling and difficult to treat.
In rare cases, frank psychosis has been attributed to chronic Lyme disease effects, including mis-diagnoses of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Panic attack and anxiety can occur, also delusional behavior, including somatoform delusions, sometimes accompanied by a depersonalization or derealization syndrome similar to what was seen in the past in the prodromal or early stages of general paresis.
Transmission is relatively rare, with only about 1% of recognized tick bites resulting in Lyme disease: this may be due to the fact that an infected tick has to be attached for at least a day for transmission to occur.
When making a diagnosis of Lyme disease, health care providers should consider other diseases that may cause similar illness. Most but not all patients with Lyme disease will develop the characteristic bulls-eye rash, and many may not recall a tick bite. Laboratory testing is not recommended for persons who do not have symptoms of Lyme disease.
For this reason, a reviewer called Lyme the new "great imitator." Lyme disease may be misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), lupus, or other autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases.
Spontaneous remission can occur in multiple sclerosis, and resolution of MRI white matter hyper-intensities, after antibiotic treatment, has been observed in Lyme disease.
Reduction of the deer population may over time help break the reproductive cycle of the deer ticks and their ability to flourish in suburban and rural areas. http://www.ct.gov/caes/lib/caes/documents/publications/bulletins/b1010.pdf An unusual, organic approach to control of ticks and prevention of Lyme disease involves the use of domesticated guineafowl. Guineafowl are voracious consumers of insects and have a particular fondness for ticks. Localized use of domesticated guineafowl may reduce dependence on chemical pest-control methods.
After feeding, female adult ticks lay their eggs on the ground, and the cycle is complete. On the West Coast of the United States, Lyme disease is spread by the western black-legged tick ( Ixodes pacificus ), which has a different life cycle.
Of cases reported to the United States CDC, the ratio of Lyme disease infection is 7.9 cases for every 100,000 persons. In the ten states where Lyme disease is most common, the average was 31.6 cases for every 100,000 persons for the year 2005.
Both rodents and birds are competent reservoir hosts for B. burgdorferi sensu stricto . The resistance of a genospecies of Lyme disease spirochetes to the bacteriolytic activities of the alternative complement pathway of various host species may determine its reservoir host association.
Since 1976 the disease is most often referred to as Lyme disease, Lyme borreliosis or simply borreliosis.
Source: Wikipedia > Lyme Disease
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