COVER STORIES: TAKING AIM AT LYME DISEASE

Accelerating Lyme Disease Diagnostics

New measurement technologies bring hope for early-stage detection

By Britt E. Erickson

Department: Government & Policy

Keywords: Lyme disease, diagnostics, NIH

Cover Stories

• Taking Aim At Lyme Disease
• A Shot Against Lyme Disease
• Accelerating Lyme Disease Diagnostics

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DISEASE AGENT

B. burgdorferi, spirochetal bacteria that cause Lyme disease, are difficult to detect directly because only a small number are present in a patient’s blood. The average length of the bacterium is 20–30 µm.

Credit: Janice Haney Carr/CDC

When Tracy Lambeth woke up one day with extreme back pain, she brushed it off as a pulled muscle. But after several weeks, the pain did not go away. She was tested for Lyme disease, even though she did not have a bull’s-eye rash—a common sign of the illness—or any recollection of a tick biting her. The results were negative. Tracy, then 26 and living in Pennsylvania, was told she had fibromyalgia and was sent home without any treatment.

One-and-a-half years later, Tracy was bitten by a tick and developed a bull’s-eye rash on the back of her knee. She was hospitalized for four days. “We think I had the bacteria in my system, and this next tick bite just made everything worse,” she says.

Read rest of story: http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i25/Accelerating-Lyme-Disease-Diagnostics.html