Lyme Disease - Still A Modern Concern
Lyme disease, first described in Connecticut in 1975, is an inflammatory disorder with a characteristic annular lesion, erythema chronicum migrans (ECM), which may be followed by arthritic, cardiac, or neurological manifestations. Initial epidemiologic evidence suggested that Lyme disease was transmitted by the nymphal stage of the tick Ixodes dammini. That the etiologic agent of Lyme disease is a spirochete was first proposed in 1982. Spirochetes were subsequently isolated from adult and immature I. dammini from New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. Past evidence indicated that Lyme disease in the United States and cases of ECM in Europe were transmitted solely by ticks in the genus Ixodes. In New Jersey, populations of Amblyomma americanum ticks temporally coexist with I. dammini and equally infest a variety of mammalian hosts including the white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Although manifestations of the disease were seen in Europe, it remained for Dr. Allen C. Steere of Yale Medical School to diagnose it in the United States, in 1975, and define many of its wide-ranging symptoms. Six years later, Willy Burgdorfer, an entomologist at the federal Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana, identified in the digestive tract of the deer tick the spirochete that caused the illness. In 1985, Steere and Jorge L. Benach, a research scientist with the New York State Health Department, nailed down the final proof of causation by isolating the spirochete in the blood of Lyme disease patients. |
