Symptoms And Treatment Of Lyme Disease - 1897 Words

Background: Definition of the condition: Lyme disease is named after the town of Old Lyme in Connecticut, where the first cases of Lyme disease (LD) were discovered in 1975. About twelve children, who lived in the same area of this town, were diagnosed with arthritis which was discovered to be caused by Lyme disease (Levi et al., 2012). In 1982, a scientist named Willy Burgdorfer and his coworkers, established the link between ticks and the transmission of Borralis bacteria which is proven to result in skin rashes. The life cycle: The tick has three stages: Larval, nymphs, and adult (which feed on different hosts). Ticks feed once for each stage. Larval ticks feed from August to September on white-footed mice, the nymphs are active†¦show more content†¦A skin rash called erythema migrans (Bulls- eye lesion) is seen in 70 to 80% of patients who have LD, which develops seven to ten days after a tick bite. The second stage occurs several weeks to months after the tick bite. The spirochetes spreads to lymph nodes and the blood causing disseminated skin lesions. If not treated, meningitis, facial palsy, heart block, and carditis may occur in some patients. The late persistent stage occurs months to years after initial infection. If patients are untreated, joints and muscle pain, arthritis of big joints, sleep disturbance, numbness, ataxia, and mood changes may occur (McPhee Papadakis, 2015.p. 1488). Diagnosis: The diagnosis is dependent on the stage of the disease. At the early stage, when there are flu like symptoms and a rash, the diagnosis is made clinically. The blood test, if made at this stage, will have negative results because the antibodies take two to four weeks to develop. For the late stage, the diagnosis of LD is made by a screening test using ELISA which is a very sensitive but less specific test. The positive results are confirmed by Western Blot test. Culture and PCR are gold standard tests for diagnosis of B. burgdorferi, but they are costly (McPhee Papadakis, 2015.p 1490) Treatment: Regardless of the stage of the disease, the maximum course of antibiotics does not exceed four weeks of therapy. Oral doxycycline,