The same deer tick that carries Lyme disease is responsible for a newly discovered bacterial infection. Here's what you need to know.
When mysterious symptoms, including weight loss, fatigue, and confusion, struck Anna Felix, 81, of Kingwood Township, N.J., her doctors were stumped.
She showed the classic symptoms of Lyme disease, but tested negative for the bacteria that causes it. Then, lab technicians at Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, N.J., made a breakthrough discovery. Felix was infected with the bacteria borrelia miyamotoi, which causes a new disease transmitted by the same deer tick that transmits Lyme disease.
Felix is thought to be the first American treated specifically for this new tick-borne illness — a disease so new it doesn't even have a name — though other cases have been recorded in Russia, according to articles published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
A representative from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls this bacteria "exceptionally rare" and says it should not be a cause for alarm.
Diagnosing Tick-Borne Illness
Felix is the first patient to be diagnosed with this pathogen while presently experiencing symptoms. (She was treated with penicillin and made a full recovery.) But a recent study of archived blood samples of patients with immune infections published in the New England Journal of Medicine detects evidence of borrelia miyamotoi in 18 out of the more than 800 patients studied. This shows that the infection is more wide-spread than experts initially believed.
"The bottom line is that this is probably a widespread pathogen transmitted by blacklegged ticks, and it’s probably making a lot of people sick," explains Rick Ostfeld, PhD, a senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. "But, we haven’t detected it until now because we didn’t look."
Ostfeld says his team is beginning to analyze tick DNA samples to try and isolate where the borrelia miyamotoi is the most abundant and dangerous.
Joseph Gugliotta, MD, the doctor who treated Felix's infection, believes the now-known presence of borrelia miyamotoi will help explain future sicknesses that seem like Lyme disease, but return a negative Lyme disease test.
Researchers say it's likely that the borrelia miyamotoi bacteria will appear in areas where Lyme disease is endemic, including the Northeast and upper Midwest.
Symptoms of Lyme disease and borrelia miyamotoi might include a rash, fever, headache, muscle and joint ache, and swollen lymph modes. As with Lyme disease, the best way to prevent this new tick-borne infection is through taking preventive measures against ticks year-round, though it's important to be extra vigilant in warmer months, according to CDC data. To avoid ticks, avoid wooded and bushy areas with high grass and leaf litter, and use insect repellents that contain 20 percent or more DEET. Bathe or shower as soon as possible after coming indoors, and conduct a full-body tick check using a hand-held or full-length mirror. Parents should check children for ticks as well.
The summer of 2012 was perhaps the worst Lyme disease season on record, while another new disease carried by deer ticks, babesiosis, sickened several people in the Midwest.
source: everydayhealth
