Borellia burgdofer Lyme Disease Carlie Whiting Lyme Disease

Borellia burgdofer -Lyme Disease Carlie Whiting

Lyme Disease • What Is lyme Disease? • Signs and Symptoms • Stages • Diagnosis • Treatment • Prevention

What is Lyme’s Disease? • Lyme Disease is an inflammatory disease caused by Borelli burgdorfer. Borellia is a loosely coiled spirochete. • It is contracted through tick bites and is difficult to diagnose. • It can take 2 days to 2 weeks to diagnose.

What is Lyme Disease? • It is the most common vector-borne infection in the U. S. • The vector is the Ixodid tick, which has the ability to “hitchhike” on the host (humans). • The tick will attach and begin to fill with blood, becoming more than 100 x its orginial size and infecting the human.

Deer Tick

Signs and Symptoms • • Rash at the site of the bite Flu Like Symptoms: fever, headache, muscle pain and dizziness • After a couple days or weeks, a rash will spread like a bullseye. Clear center, outer red bands are raised.

Rash

Stage 1 -3 • Stage 1 - rash (20% lack), migraines, flu like symptoms • Stage 2 - Stage 1 symptoms begin to get worse, rash gets bigger • Stage 3 -heart and nervous system problems (memory loss, facial palsy, joint inflammation)

Diagnosis • The ELISA test- tests for the presence of antibodies • If the ELISA test comes back positive, than the Western Blot is used to confirm that the disease is Lyme Disease. • The red ring rash is an easier diagnosis, but as stated before it can take a long time for it to appear.

Treatment • Antibiotics: doxycycline, amoxicillin, ceftriaxone and penicillin • If there is a late diagnosis (2 nd or 3 rd stage), antibiotics need to taken for 4 weeks and even longer if severe arthritis occurred.