Lyme disease

Skin | Pathology | Lyme disease (Disease)


Description

Lyme disease is a bacterial illness caused by a bacterium called a spirochete. Borrelia burgdorferi (in the US) and another bacterium, Borrelia afzelii (in Europe), also causes Lyme disease.

Lymes disease develops in three phases:

(1) Primary phase is manifested by a chronic lesion called erythema migration, occurring between three days and one month after the tick bite. This is an initial papular skin redness and inflammation, centered about the sting, which lies in a concentric, forming a ring. Erythema is accompanied by a fever of low intensity, joint and muscle pain. Skin lesions resolved within three weeks.

(2) Secondary phase is expressed by attacks of erythema, the neurological manifestations, cardiac manifestations and by the joint pain of inflammatory origin. It lasts a few weeks to several months.

(3) Tertiary Phase occurs many years after the sting, it associates an acrodermatitis chronic atrophied, a pseudolimfom, chronic rheumatism of one or more joints and brain attacks.

Causes and Risk factors

Certain ticks found on deer harbor the bacterium in their stomachs. Lyme disease is spread by these ticks when they bite the skin, which permits the bacterium to infect the body. Lyme disease is not contagious from an affected person to someone else. Lyme disease can cause abnormalities in the skin, joints, heart, and nervous system.

Diagnosis and Treatment

A blood test will be done to detect antibodies to the bacteria.

Treatment consists in antibiotics, which treat newcomers and prevents clinical manifestations of late neurological manifestations. Possible prevention of the disease consists in treating with antibiotics after a tick bite if the region is known as a place of developing the disease. ...