Ticks and Lyme Disease

Abstract

Lyme disease was ranked second to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the degree of public concern generated in USA, and is now recognized as a multi-focal pandemic. A cost-benefit study of drug treatment has been undertaken in USA because in endemic areas of Lyme disease the ratio of false positives, with non-specific myalgia and fatigue, to true positives was approximately 4:1. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Clinical Case Definition of Lyme Disease in the USA was devised as a means of epidemiological assessment. Ixodes dammini was the tick principally implicated in the early years of Lyme disease reporting in the eastern USA. Ixodid ticks including I .dammini have a life cycle in which feeding takes place three times, once by each of the three stages, each on a fresh host. The three stages (larvae, nymphs, and adults) complete the life cycle over a period of 2–6 years. The disease has three stages: (1) flu-like symptoms and localized erythema migrans (EM) and lymphocytoma, (2) weeks to months later, acute neurological, arthritic and/or cardiac symptoms, multiple EM lesions, and (3) months to years later, persistent or remitting for 6–12 months, arthritis and chronic neurological symptoms and other organ manifestations,. The first treatment regimes for Lyme disease were with penicillin but later trials have indicated that tetracyclines are more effective in the control of early symptoms.