Lyme Disease
Lyme Disease | Symptoms | Causes | Treatment
What is Lyme Disease?
Lyme disease is more common than original thought and is difficult to diagnose.
Lyme, Lime, Lymes
Lyme disease (often misspelled as “Lime” or “Lymes”) is an inflammatory infection that spreads to humans through tick bites.
The infection is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi which the ticks are just carriers of.
How Many Suffer with Lyme Disease?
According to the Centers for Disease Control, approximately 30,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported to CDC each year by state health departments and the District of Columbia. However, this number does not reflect every case of Lyme disease that is diagnosed in the United States every year.
Surveillance systems provide vital information but they do not capture every illness. Because only a fraction of illnesses are reported, researchers need to estimate the total burden of illness to set public health goals, allocate resources, and measure the economic impact of disease. CDC uses the best data available and makes reasonable adjustments—based on related data, previous study results, and common assumptions—to account for missing pieces of information.
To improve public health, CDC wants to know how many people are actually diagnosed with Lyme disease each year and for this reason has conducted two studies. Read more on the studies
Reported from all over the world - some areas are show a higher percentage of reported cases.
