Nearly 15% of People Worldwide Have Had Lyme Disease, Study Says

Lyme disease was first named nearly 50 years ago in Lyme, Connecticut, but the tick-borne disease is now found around the world. A new study published in BMJ Global Health estimates that 14.5% of the world’s population has, at some point, been infected with Lyme disease, which can cause short-term symptoms including a skin rash, fever, headache, and fatigue—as well as long-term ones, including damage to the joints, heart, and nervous system. The scourge also appears to be getting worse. Lyme prevalence has doubled from 2010 to 2021, compared to 2001 to 2010. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The study, led by a team of researchers from the Institute for Tropical Medicine at Kunming Medical University in China, was a meta-analysis of 89 studies dating as far back as 1984 until 2021. That cache of papers included blood samples from nearly 160,000 people who were tested for Borrelia burgdorferi, the spiral-shaped bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Blood samples were examined by any one of a range of methods, including the ELISA test, which uses enzymes to detect the presence of antibodies in the blood; and the IFA test, which uses a fluorescence method to do the same job. Considered more reliable than both techniques is the Western blotting method, which looks for proteins in the blood as markers of infection with a target bacterium or virus. The Western blotting method is thought to reduce the incidence of false positive results, but it has a major draw...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Disease healthscienceclimate Source Type: news