What are the Signs and Symptoms of Lyme Disease?

Lyme Disease causes numerous symptoms, but none of them are unique to lyme disease, which makes diagnosing Lyme disease on the basis of presenting symptoms extremely difficult.
Further, it has also been identified, that each of the 4 Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria groups can and do generate different symptoms of Lyme disease to each other, making it damn near impossible to identify Lyme disease purely on the basis of presenting symptoms alone.

There are, however, 3 common symptom stages in the progress of Lyme disease in humans, and each stage of Lyme disease comes with its own kind of general symptoms:

Stage 1 Symptoms of Lyme Disease:

Within 2-3 weeks of the Lyme infection:
High temperature, fatigue, headaches, muscle pains, joint pains (not arthritis) and enlarged lymph glands, typically shows.

Lyme disease infection - the red bulls-eye

A red bulls-eye looking infection often shows within one month of being bitten by an infected tick, normally at the same spot where the tick bit you. You can see this bulls-eye characteristic in the following picture. Matter of fact, this characteristic is the only symptom totally unique to Lyme disease infection in humans, that when you get it, your doctor can diagnose the condition on that symptom alone. Alas though, not everyone who becomes infected with Lyme disease gets this unique symptom, only about 60 to 80% of Lyme infected persons in North America do so.

Stage 2 Symtpoms of Lyme Disease:

After a number of weeks, or even months, the common Lyme disease symptoms can include:
Inflammation of the heart, chronic inflammation of the tissues surrounding the brain or spinal cord, inflammation of a nerve often with pain and occasionally loss of function (eg Bell’s palsy) and inflammation of the outer surface of the eye. Pain in joints and pain in muscles are often prominent.

Stage 3 Symptoms of Lyme Disease:

The symptoms that can occur months / years after contracting Lyme disease:

Lyme disease arthritis - Lyme arthritis

In the USA and Canada the main Lyme disease symptom is significant arthritis of the large joints, especially the knees.

Acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans

In Europe, the main symptom to appear at this stage is acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans, which is a skin condition generally affecting the hands and feet. The skin being chronically inflamed, which leads the skin to become extremely thin, dry and fragile, with areas of hardening and thickening.

 These stages of Lyme disease symptoms are vital to diagnosing and treating Lyme disease.

If you try and treat Lyme disease without knowing what symptom stage the Lyme disease is in, there is a good chance you will treat the lyme disease with the wrong treatment.

Much of this information on Lyme disease came from http://medent.usyd.edu.au/fact/lyme%20disease.htm - a rather dry piece of academic work, but full of information.

Lab work must always be undertaken to confirm any suspicion of lyme disease and also to rule out other conditions that have similar symptoms.

Using a Culture/PCR to diagnose Lyme disease

The lab work typically requires a small skin biopsy taken from the edge of the bulls-eye infection, which is then cultured in the lab. In can take up to 8 weeks for the lyme disease bacteria to reach sufficient numbers to be identified via the culture. Alternatively, using a technique called the Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the lyme disease may be diagnosed in as little as 24 hours.

Using blood tests to diagnose Lyme disease

Blood testing for Lyme disease is not so good, and is unreliable. Blood tests are used in the two latter stages of Lyme disease, NOT the start.

Sometimes people will be found to have Lyme disease in the latter stages, who in fact do not have Lyme disease. The unreliability of blood tests is due to other conditions that give similar results to Lyme disease on the tests. There is no Lyme disease blood test as such. Screening tests are to catch people who may be more likely to have Lyme disease, not to diagnose Lyme disease.

Using DNA type testing to diagnose Lyme disease

Were you found to be positive or borderline on the screening test for advanced Lyme disease?

Any borderline or positive results should be confirmed by using the Western immunoblot (WB) test, on a tissue sample ( a biopsy of tissue is taken from the patient, and it is tested in a simialr way to DNA, except they are checking for proteins specific to Lyme disease, rather than human DNA)

The Western immunoblot test can detect advanced Lyme disease – but is more costly and time consuming than the blood screening tests.

That’s right, folks. According to my doctor, it wasn’t a flare up, but an actual new infection because the lab work showed two different results – one for an active infection and one for a previous one. Since I’ve been taking every possible precaution, I’m a bit frustrated right now! The good news is that it was the milder form of Lyme as opposed to the form I had before. The bad news? It’s Lyme Disease.

So, now, although I finished the antibiotics, I feel like I have Mono and will probably feel that way for about six months on top of everything that’s still wrong from the first bout. Ick. Those guys in the country songs that mowed down paradise to put up a parking lot?  They probably had Lyme Disease and then got it again! I’d like to do that to all the nice green stuff around me, too.

Anyone else get two separate bouts with Lyme Disease  back to back or am I just special?

According to the Hartford Courant, the state of Connecticut is going to gather actual data on the number of positive lab results for Lyme and whether doctors use those results to diagnose Lyme disease. I think an organized effort like this is a great idea and I hope it helps health organizations realize that the tests they use aren’t always effective.

There is an uproar in the Lyme disease patient community over a new report by a group of scientists and doctors that says chronic Lyme disease does not exist:

A prestigious group of physicians and scientists says there is no evidence that chronic Lyme disease exists, and that patients may be doing themselves more harm than good by undergoing prolonged antibiotic therapy.

They prefer to call the problems of people with long term symptoms post Lyme disease syndrome and compare it to fibromylagia. Frankly, I don’t care what they call it. I want them to come up with a way to fix it!

tick

Originally uploaded by John Carleton

You come back from a nature walk and you find a tick embedded in your skin. Ick. As you run for the vaseline, you hesitate. Didn’t you hear that wasn’t really the way to remove ticks? Maybe you should get a lighter instead and burn the little biter. No, wait…how do you remove ticks anyway?

Well, there really is only one way to remove a tick properly and it involves tweezers and pulling. Sorry, folks, I know it is gross, but if you don’t take it off properly, you risk infections and ticks hanging around on you for a few more days. Grasp the tick with the tweezers as close to the head as possible and pull it out. It is important to get the whole tick.

You may want to save the dead tick to show your doctor if you suspect Lyme disease. Make sure it is in a container it can’t get out of!