Agreeing with the overwhelming scientific consensus , the Medical Commission concluded:. The most common treatment for a patient with acute Lyme disease is a day course of doxycycline, an antibiotic. Patients treated with long-term antibiotic therapy for Lyme disease have had severe adverse responses, including death. Other reactions include bloodstream infections, pulmonary embolism, septic thrombophlebitis, and gastrointestinal bleeding. Long-term antibiotic therapy has not proven to provide any long-term benefits to patients with post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome.
Benefits appear to last only as long as the treatment continues. When treatment concludes, symptoms return, indicating an underlying, undiagnosed cause of symptoms. Clinical trials show no benefit to long-term therapy in comparison to the initial day treatment plan for acute Lyme disease. Most patients with medically unexplained symptoms who received a diagnosis of post-treatment Lyme disease will require more than antibiotics to manage their symptoms.
These patients should consult with their physician regarding a treatment plan that also includes emotional support, nutritional guidance and physical therapy. Practitioners should openly address any concerns and should reassure patients. The rash of Lyme disease is different from the small red area that often develops just around the bite from a common tick. Many people bitten by an infected tick develop a large expanding skin rash around the area of the bite see Figure 2.
Some people may get more than one rash. The rash may feel hot to the touch and is usually not painful. Rashes vary in size shape and color but often look like a red ring with a clear center see Figure 3. The outer edges expand slowly in size.
It is easy to miss the connection between the rash and a tick bite. The rash develops from three days to as long as a month after a tick bite. Almost one third of people with Lyme disease never get the rash. Joint or muscle pain may be another early sign of Lyme disease. These aches and pains may be easy to confuse with the pain that comes with other types of arthritis. Unlike many other types of arthritis, this pain seems to move or travel from joint to joint.
It lasts only a short time in any one joint. In later stages Lyme disease may be confused with other medical problems. These problems can develop weeks to years after the first tick bite. For instance, Lyme disease can cause problems with the nervous system that look like other diseases. These include symptoms of stiff neck severe headache and fatigue usually linked to acute viral meningitis.
They may include drooping of the muscles on the face called Bell's palsy or weakness pain or numbness elsewhere in the body. Lyme disease can also mimic symptoms of other chronic disabling diseases of the nervous system. A small percentage of people may develop difficulty in thinking and mood disorders. Treatment is more difficult and less successful in later stages. Lyme disease may cause other serious problems.
It can cause heart problems, such as an irregular or slow heartbeat. Lyme disease can result in intermittent attacks of arthritis in a few large joints. A small percentage of people get a disabling chronic type of arthritis that most often affects the knees.
Researchers think the chronic arthritis of Lyme disease may be linked to how the body's defense or immune system responds to the infection. It is important to watch for Lyme disease in pets such as dogs and farm animals such as horses and cows. For a service fee, the laboratory will test for presence of pathogens common to the determined tick species, and get test results to you within three to five days.
The laboratory is a non-profit organization. You can make your yard less attract to ticks. Focus your management of tick habitat to areas frequently used by your family, not necessarily your entire property. Soft ticks behave differently than most ticks. They are found in mountainous regions living within rodent burrows and nests of mice, squirrels, and chipmunks. The ticks prefer dark, cool places, such as rodent nests in shaded wood piles outside buildings, and between walls or beneath floorboards inside buildings.
People most often encounter these ticks when sleeping in rodent-infested cabins. Soft ticks emerge at night and feed briefly, like bed bugs. Because the bites are quick and painless, most people do not know that they have been bitten. Infected soft ticks can transmit tick-borne relapsing fever. Seven cases of Lyme disease were reported in All seven cases had exposures in endemic areas in the Midwest 2 and on the East Coast 5 of the United States.
An additional 46 reports were determined not to meet the criteria for a Lyme disease case.
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