Lyme Disease Less Rare Than Previously Thought In The South

The Aiken Standard hit it on the head. Lyme disease is far more prevalent in the South than is reported. This op-ed explores all sides of the complicated issue revolving around Lyme disease and it's treatment.

Lyme disease in the South may not be nearly as rare as reported case numbers lead us to believe. In fact, scientists such as Georgia Southern’s world-renowned tick expert Dr. Jim Oliver and colleagues have documented more species and strains of Lyme disease-causing bacteria, (Borrelia burgdorferi) in the southeastern United States than in any other region of the country.

Lyme disease bacteria have been identified in thousands of tick and animal specimens from across the South for many years. The southeastern bacterial strains are so diverse, the current Lyme disease testing system used in the United States – which is only designed to detect a single strain – may miss many Southern cases.

A recent study published by the University of North Florida’s Dr. Kerry Clark and colleagues found two species of Lyme bacteria, B. andersonii and B. americana, in symptomatic patients from Florida and Georgia. Several patients had no travel history. These Lyme bacteria species were previously identified in ticks and animals in the southeastern United States and elsewhere, but were unknown to infect humans until now.

In the same study, the exact species of bacteria known to cause Lyme disease in the Northeast was also found in some of the Southern patients. Importantly, the lone star tick was implicated.

Lone star ticks are highly aggressive biters. They are the most commonly found tick species feeding upon humans in the southeastern U.S. but are also found elsewhere in the nation. For years, scientists have documented Lyme bacteria in lone star ticks, but authorities previously reported that they could not transmit the disease. Dr. Ed Masters of Missouri collected cases of Lyme disease transmitted by lone star ticks and, along with the CDC, discovered that many of his patients indeed tested positive following lone star bites. This is an important finding because Lyme disease risk is often calculated only on the number of infected “deer ticks” found in a region. Lone star and other ticks have been largely ignored when assessing disease risk (which is sadly the case with Yale’s new CDC-funded national Lyme disease Risk Map where only nine ticks from the Southeast were even tested for Lyme disease).

(VIA)