Lyme disease is the fastest-spreading vector-borne disease in the United States with more than 400,000 estimated cases diagnosed annually. Lyme disease has been reported in every state throughout the United States.
People can contract Lyme disease and related co-infections from the bite of an infected tick. Ticks can be infectious in all their stages of growth, but it’s thought to be most dangerous in the nymph stage since it’s not seen easily after it attaches. Not all tick bites will result in illness.
Lyme disease was first recognized In 1976, by doctors at Yale University after a cluster of children living in three towns on the coast of Connecticut were diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. In 1975, two mothers from Lyme Connecticut became very suspicious that something else was brewing and brought it to the attention of the CT State Dept. of Health. The researchers found most of the patients with arthritis lived in heavily wooded areas with the first symptoms beginning in the summer. In addition the disease was not contagious from person to person.
Curiously, several patients remembered having had a bulls-eye rash before the arthritis began. Subsequently the same round red skin rash, named Erythema Migrans (EM) was first described by a Swedish physician in 1909.
Doctors knew these patients were bitten by a tick before the rash developed. With further research it became clear that Lyme arthritis was a more complex illness. It not only involved the skin but included the nervous system and the heart, of both children and adults.
In the early 20th Century, Europeans described neurological involvement associated with an expanding skin lesion following a tick bite which they called Bannwarth’s Syndrome. Since the skin rash was later found to respond to penicillin, researchers concluded that bacteria could be the root of the illness rather than a virus which would not respond to an antibiotic.
In 1982, NIH scientist Dr. William Burgdorfer, discovered within the tick the spirochete which causes Lyme disease. Subsequently, the bacteria was named after Dr. Burgdorfer, as Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb). This discovery had a major impact in the scientific community. The knowledge and research gleaned from Dr. Burgdorfer’s work expanded the worldwide picture of Lyme disease. It became the springboard for further research regarding the biology, transmission, treatment, and prevention of this disease.