Lyme disease

Disease transmitted by tick bites that affects all the systems of the body. It is caused by the micro-organism Borrelia burgdorferi, isolated by Burgdorfer and Barbour in the USA in 1982. Symptoms include a red ‘bull's eye’ rash around the bite, but this only occurs in about two-thirds of cases, and otherwise the early stages are difficult to distinguish from flu. Untreated, the disease attacks the joints, nervous system, heart, liver, kidneys, and eyes, but responds to penicillin or tetracycline. It has a 10% mortality rate.

The tick that carries the disease, Ixodes dammini, lives on deer, while B. burgdorferi relies on mice during its life cycle.

The disease was first described in 1975 following an outbreak in children living around Lyme, Connecticut.

There has been a dramatic increase in the incidence of Lyme disease in the USA since 1982, when there were only 500 cases recorded. By 1996 there were more than 16,000 cases in the year. In June 1998 a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee recommended that a new vaccine be approved for commercial use. In December 1998, the US FDA approved the vaccine against Lyme disease. However, incidents of lyme disease in the USA continued to climb, rising to a record high in 2000, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recording 17,730 cases in 44 states and the District of Columbia, a rise of 8% over 1999.