Lyme Disease: causes, symptoms and treatment with antibiotics

Definition of Lyme Disease

Lyme disease is an infectious illness brought on by a spirochete (spiral-shaped bacterium) transmitted to humans by the bite of an infected deer tick. The alternate name of Lyme disease-borreliosis-comes from the scientific name of the bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi. Lyme disease can be classified as an infectious arthritis because the body’s immune response towards the bacterium creates inflammation and arthritis-like joint or muscle pain in some people.

Lyme disease is regarded as a zoonosis, or illness transmitted by animals to humans, as well as an emerging infectious disease. Household pets (cats and dogs) that are allowed outdoors can be infected with Lyme illness as well as humans. Common signs and symptoms of Lyme disease in animals include joint soreness, limping or lameness, fever, and loss of appetite.

An infectious illness, Lyme illness is brought on by a spiral-shaped bacterium that lives inside deer ticks. The tick transmits the illness from one animal to another or from animals to humans when it feeds on their blood. The signs and symptoms of the disease differ from individual to individual. Not everyone who gets Lyme illness has all the signs and symptoms or has them with equal severity. The first stage of Lyme disease is frequently (though not usually) marked by a red rash recognized as erythema chronicum migrans, or EM, in the site of the tick bite.

The rash may have a circular or bull’s-eye appearance. It occurs in about 80 percent of patients within 3 to thirty days following the bite. The rash expands more than the subsequent few days to cover as much as 12 inches (30 centimeters) of skin. Patients might also have flulike symptoms, including fatigue, chills, low-grade fever, headache, muscle and joint aches, and swollen lymph nodes.

In some cases, these flu-like symptoms may be the only indication of Lyme infection. If the infection is not treated, patients might create a second stage of signs and symptoms that can include heart palpitations, fatigue, headaches, temporary paralysis of facial muscles, meningitis, or dizziness. Some patients experience a third stage of the illness, marked by arthritis-like pain in the joints and muscles, numbness in the arms and legs, loss of memory, along with other neurological symptoms.

Causes and symptoms of Lyme Disease

The cause of Lyme illness is a spirochete carried from one animal or human host to another by several varieties of ticks found in the United States. These ticks have a two-year life cycle. They're born in the summer as larvae and feed only once, on the blood of field mice. The next spring, the larva becomes a nymph and feeds again on a mouse’s blood. In the fall, the nymph becomes an adult tick and feeds on the blood of a white-tailed deer. If the tick has picked up the spirochete from

the mice or the deer, it can transmit the illness to a human at this point. It takes one to three days for the tick to transmit B. burgdorferi to a human because it requires time for the bacterium to multiply inside the tick following it has bitten a individual. Once feeding begins, the bacteria inside the tick multiply quickly and move into the salivary glands of the tick after one to two days or so. The tick then injects the bacteria into the human as it continues its feeding. This time delay is one cause why prompt removal of a tick is usually efficient in preventing Lyme disease and most other tick-borne infections.

Diagnosis of Lyme Disease

The diagnosis of Lyme illness is complex by several elements. The first is that only 20 percent of patients are aware that they've been bitten by a tick. If they do not create the characteristic EM rash, the diagnosis may be delayed. Second, the ticks that carry Lyme illness also often carry other illnesses like ehrlichiosis or babesiosis, so that an individual might have an additional tick-borne infection alongside or instead of Lyme disease. Third, most of the indicators and symptoms of Lyme illness can be brought on by a selection of other disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis, complications of gonorrhea, lupus, or gout. The CDC recommends as of 2007 that doctors search for three elements when evaluating a patient who might have Lyme illness:

A history of possible exposure to ticks in components of the United States recognized to have a higher than average rate of Lyme disease
Physical indicators and symptoms that include EM
A blood test that shows the patient has antibodies to Borrelia burgdorferi

Even so, blood tests aren't 100 percent accurate, particularly if they're given before the patient’s body has had time to create antibodies to the spirochete. In most components of the United States, an initial blood test for antibodies is followed up by a second test recognized as a Western blot test to confirm the diagnosis.

Treatment of Lyme disease

Early-stage Lyme disease can be effectively treated having a fourteen- to twenty-one-day course of antibiotics taken by mouth. These drugs usually clear the infection and reduce the risk of later complications. Second- or third-stage Lyme disease is treated with either a thirty-day course of an oral antibiotic or fourteen to twenty-eight days of an intravenous antibiotic.

Prognosis

The prognosis of Lyme disease is challenging to estimate because of the fact that EM is sometimes misdiagnosed. Additional, many patients do not return for follow-up visits, which complicates the doctor’s ability to measure the effectiveness of treatment or record the length of time that the patient had symptoms. In general, children who're treated early with antibiotics have an excellent prognosis for complete recovery.

Adults are more likely to develop chronic muscle and joint pain or fatigue, but generally recover given time and appropriate treatment. Although there have been a few fatal cases of Lyme illness in humans as of 2008, the overall mortality rate is extremely low.

Prevention

A vaccine effective against Lyme disease was released in 1998 but was taken off the market because of the possible side effects reported by some patients and because it was not widely used. Although research into a better vaccine is ongoing, there was no vaccine accessible against the disease as of mid-2008. Preventive measures against Lyme disease are important because of the lack of an effective vaccine. The CDC recommends the following precautions:

Stay away from wooded, brushy, and grassy areas, particularly in May, June, and July. These are the months when ticks are most likely to feed on humans and pets.
Wear light-colored clothing (which permits the ticks to be seen more easily); shoes that cover the entire foot; long pants tucked into socks or shoes; and long-sleeved shirts tucked into pants. Also put on a hat for additional protection.
Use insect repellent containing a chemical called DEET on clothes and exposed skin other than the face. An additional repellent that can be utilized on clothing is permethrin, which kills ticks on get in touch with.
When hiking in the woods, walk in the center of the trail or path; avoid brush and tall grasses.
Remove clothing following being outside; wash it in hot water and dry it in a dryer on a high setting.
Check the body for ticks following being outside, particularly the hair, the groin region, and also the armpits.
Check pets allowed outdoors for ticks in their fur, and give them tick-repellent collars. There is a vaccine to protect dogs against Lyme illness; there is, however, no vaccine for cats as of 2008. Cats seem to be much less most likely to get the illness than dogs, which can develop fatal kidney problems from Lyme disease.
Remove a tick properly if one is discovered on the body. Grasp the tick near its head or mouth, as it is critical to eliminate the head intact. Don't crush the tick but pull it backward from the skin slowly and carefully. Take the tick to a physician or local public health department so that it could be tested to see if it is a Lyme diseaserelated tick.

Lyme illness is most likely to become more common in North America in the years ahead merely because of the rising number of deer, mice, together with other small rodents that could be infected by B. burgdorferi, and also the increased amount of contact in between humans and these animals in wooded areas. This increased contact is partly due to the growing popularity of woodland hiking and fishing and partly to the building of new houses in tickinfested areas.

The CDC reports that Lyme illness was one of the fastest-growing infectious diseases in the United States as of 2008 and that it has spread from the regions exactly where it was first noticed to forty-nine of the fifty states. Researchers are working on developing a brand new vaccine against Lyme disease. In addition, other scientists are trying to discover more about the bacterium that causes the illness in order to develop better methods to diagnose and treat it.