Introduction
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection. It always occurs and causes by a black-legged tick, it is also known as the deer tick, bites it and remains attach for 36 to 48 hours. If you remove the tick within 48 hours, it probably won’t become infected.
When infected, the bacteria travel through your bloodstream and affect various tissues in your body. If you don’t treat Lyme disease in the beginning, it can develop into an inflammatory condition that affects multiple systems, starting with the skin, joints, and nervous system and then moving to the organs.
Your chances of getting Lyme disease from a tick bite depend on the type of tick, where it was when you got it, and how long it was attach to you. You are more likely to get Lyme disease if you live in the northeastern United States. The Upper Midwest countries are also a hot spot of this disease. But the disease now affects people in all 50 countries and the District of Columbia and the United States.
What is Lyme disease?
Lyme disease is an infectious disease cause by the bite of the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. Lyme disease spreads very quickly. According to reports a few years ago, Lyme disease was listed among the fastest spreading infections after AIDS in the United States. Apart from this, cases of Lyme disease generally seen in Asia, Europe and South America. In fact, Lyme disease is an infection associate with inflammation and redness of the skin, which in humans occurs due to the bite of Borrelia burgdorferi. Borrelia burgdorferi are very small organisms that stick to our skin and suck blood, thus spreading the infection.
Symptoms of Lyme disease
Symptoms are generally appearing in the skin 3 to 30 days after the bite. This appearance may look different its depend on the stage of your infection. In some cases, you do see and do not notice any symptoms of the disease until months after the bite.
The first symptoms include:
- Fever
- Shaking chills
- Headache
- Fatigue
- Muscle and joint pain
- Swollen lymph nodes
All of these disease symptoms are the same as common in the flu. In most Lyme infections, one of the first symptoms you will notice is a rash.
Without treatment, symptoms can get worse. They may include:
- Severe headache or stiff neck
- Rashes in other areas of your body
- Serve Arthritis with joint bone pain and swelling, especially in the knees
- “Dropping” on one or both sides of your face
- An irregular heartbeat
- Swelling in your brain and spinal cord
- Serving pain, numbness, or tingling the skin in the hands or feet
Click Here to read more About Brain tumor treatment
Causes of Lyme disease
Lyme disease is cause by the bite of Borrelia burgdorferi. Borrelia burgdorferi are very small organisms that stick to our skin and suck blood, thus spreading the infection.
If an animal is bitten by an insect and it is infected with bacteria, this worm is also infected. When an infected insect bites a person and sucks blood, the bacteria enters that person.
These insects are very small and their bite does not feel any pain, so you do not feel the bite. However, if this worm is attach to your body for more than 24 hours, the risk of infection increases even more.
Once infected, the bacteria enter the bloodstream and lymphatic system from the skin.
The lymphatic system helps fight infection and is made up of a group of vessels and glands (lymph nodes).
These bacteria can also damage your joints and nervous system if left untreated. Later, other symptoms of Lyme disease will also begin to appear.
Diagnosis of Lyme Disease
When evaluating a patient for Lyme disease, healthcare providers should consider:
- Signs and symptoms of Lyme disease
- Possibility of the patient coming into contact with infected black-legged ticks.
- Chances are other diseases may have similar symptoms.
- Results of laboratory tests, when indicated
Lab test
Currently, the doctors recommend a two-step lab testing process for Lyme disease. Both the steps are mandatory and can be do on the same blood sample. If this first stage of tests is negative, then you do not need any other testing is recommend. If the first step is positive or uncertain (sometimes called “equivalent”), then the second step should be perform. if your test gets the overall result is positive if only the first test is positive it is (or uniformly) and the second test is positive it is (or equivocal for some tests).
Key Points to Remember
Most Lyme disease screening tests are design to detect antibodies made by the body in response to infection.
It can take several weeks for antibodies to develop, so patients may test negative if they have been recently infected.
Antibodies are usually persisting in the blood for months or even years after the infection has cleared; Therefore, the test is not to determine for a cure.
False-positive test results may result from infection with certain tick-borne diseases, or other diseases, including certain viral, bacterial, or autoimmune diseases.
Sometimes the tests give you the results for two types of antibodies, IgM and IgG. Positive IgM results should be rule out if the patient has been ill for more than 30 days.
Stages of Lyme infection
There are three stages:
Early localized Lyme:
flu-like symptoms such as fever, chills, headache, swollen lymph nodes, sore throat, and a rash that looks like a bulls eye or is round and red and at least 2 inches long
Lyme spread early:
this disease symptoms most comment like flu such as pain in the body, weakness or numbness in the arms and legs, changes in vision, heart palpitations and chest pain, a rash (which may or may not be a target-shaped rash). , and a type of facial palsy known as Bell’s palsy
Late transmitted Lyme:
This can happen weeks, months, or years after a tick bite. Symptoms can include arthritis, severe fatigue and headache, dizziness, trouble sleeping, and confusion.
About 10% of people treated for Lyme infection cannot get rid of the disease. They can have three main symptoms: joint or muscle pain, fatigue, and short-term memory loss or confusion. This is called post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. It can be difficult to diagnose because its symptoms are similar to those of other diseases. Also, there is no blood test to confirm it.
Experts aren’t sure why Lyme symptoms don’t always go away. One theory is that your body continues to fight infection as an autoimmune disorder even after the bacteria are disappear.
Lyme disease treatment
With early-stage Lyme disease, you’ll take antibiotics for about 10 days to 3 weeks. The most common are amoxicillin, cefuroxime, and doxycycline. Antibiotics will almost always cure your infection. If not, you may be giving other antibiotics by mouth or by injection.
Although If you don’t treat your Lyme infection, you may need oral antibiotics for symptoms such as weak facial muscles and irregular heartbeat. If you have meningitis, inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, or more serious heart problems, you may need antibiotics.
And If your Lyme is in an advanced stage, your doctor may give you antibiotics by mouth or by injection. If it causes gout, you will be treat for gout.
There is no cure for Lyme disease syndrome after treatment.
In some areas Lyme disease mostly occurs
The tick that causes Lyme disease is increasing from the Northeast and Upper Midwest to the South and West of the US, Mexico, and Canada. Cases are increasing in California and Florida. The number increased slightly in 2019 after having decreased between 2017 and 2018.
But the majority of Lyme cases in Worsley’s see in 2019 are occurring in many states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, California, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Washington, DC is also a hotspot.
In 2019, Pennsylvania had the highest number of Lyme infections, with 6,763. New York is the next highest active cases of Lyme disease with 3265 cases.
Southern USA In the USA, where it is warmer, ticks live on the underside of leaves so they don’t dry out. This means that people often don’t get Lyme from southern ticks because they don’t usually come out to bite.
Even though people come to the US Every year the United States reports about 30,000 cases of Lyme infection, in fact, there are about 476,000 a year. The same tick can also transmit other diseases, such as babesiosis, anaplasmosis, and the Powassan virus. Those diseases are also increasing in me.
Who is most likely to get Lyme disease?
Children under the age of 15 and men between the ages of 40 and 60 are more likely to get Lyme disease. This is because they play outside and go camping, hunting, and hiking.
Some people find that Lyme infection is less common in older teens and men in their 20s because it is more likely to occur within groups and on computers. And likewise, they may be more common among older adults because they work in their backyards, where most Lyme infections occur.
How to prevent tick bites?
Ticks cannot fly or jump. But they live in bushes and bushes and can cling to you when you pass by To avoid getting bite:
- Always wear full pants and socks in areas with lots of trees and when you touch fallen leaves.
- Use a tick repellent that contains DEET, lemon oil, or eucalyptus on your skin and clothing.
- For even greater protection, use the chemical permethrin on clothing and camping gear.
- Please take a shower within 2 hours of your arrival. Look for the tick on your skin and wash the tick off your hair.
- Place your clothing and any exposed gear in a hot dryer to kill any pests.
How do you know if a tick bites you?
Since ticks are very small, you must have good eyesight to see them.
If you have a small red patch on your skin that looks like a mosquito bite, it could be a tick bite. If it disappears in a few days, no problem. Remember, a tick bite does not mean you have Lyme disease.
If you see a bull’s eye rash, you may have experienced a tick bite. Talk to your doctor about treatment.
If you have an allergic reaction to ticks, you will notice a bite right away.
Prevention of Lyme disease
There is no vaccine currently available to prevent Lyme disease. The best way to avoid Lyme disease is to take appropriate precautions and vigilance when traveling to an area where you are at risk.
Please be aware of the risks of taking this into consideration when traveling to European or North American countries.
You can reduce your risk of infection in these ways:
- Be careful with these insects and be aware of the area they are in
- Use the sidewalk when you go out and don’t walk among the tall grass
- Dress well in insect-prone areas (wear a long-sleeved shirt and keep pants between socks)
- Wear light-colored clothing so you can see the bugs clinging to them
- Use mosquito repellent to protect yourself from insects
- Check for insects on the skin, especially at the end of the day, as well as on the head, neck, and skin folds (axillary, between the thighs, and the groin).
- Also check your child’s head, neck, and top of his head.
- Make sure that insects do not enter your home by sticking to your clothes
- Also, check your pets to see if any insects enter your home by sticking to their fur.
Lyme disease vaccine
In 2017, a French company called Valneva began testing Lyme disease vaccines in adults in the US and Europe. The study and process of vaccine computing are in their second phase and it is probably complete in 2026.