Facts
What is Lyme disease?
Lyme disease is a contagious disease that can occur after a bite from a tick. The disease has a very mixed disease picture, which can include symptoms of the skin, heart, joints and nervous system
How to get Lyme disease?
Lyme disease is caused by an infection with a bacterium (Borrelia burgdoferi), transmitted by a blood sucking tick. The tick is maybe sitting on tall grass and the like, waiting for a potential host to pass. If you get the tick on you, it will typically migrate to a hot, humid and dark place on your body (crotch or armpit), but it can work everywhere. When the tick has found a suitable place on your body to settle, it sticks its trunk into your skin.
The tick is a parasite that lives on your blood. In most cases the tick will leave you after a while, or you can remove it, without any change. But in some cases the tick has a small bacterium called Borrelia burgdoferi in his digestive apparatus. This micro-organism can be transferred to you, so you get Lyme disease.
How does Lyme disease feel?
Often one would feel the tick, but often many people do not discover that they have been bitten by a tick. Remember that even if you have been bitten by a tick, you are not sure to get Lyme disease. But it is a good idea to talk to your doctor of what to be aware of.
The first danger signals can be:
A red stain around the tick bite. The red stain is gradually increasing, and often has a pale area in the middle. This is called Erythema migrans. Erythema migrans may also prove elsewhere on the body than exactly where the tick bite was, and some will have many of these red spots.
There is in typical cases 1 to 4 weeks between the bite from the tick, to obtaining Erythema migrans.
There are many people who get Lyme disease without having had Erythema migrans
Together with Erythema migrans, many people are experiencing symptoms reminiscent of flue: tiredness, headache, mild fever, joint and muscle pain and swollen lymph nodes.
Neuroborreliose
15% of people with Lyme disease develops so-called Neuroborreliose 1 week to 4-5 months after the tick bite. There is an influence of the central nervous system, and the symptoms are very different and difficult to distinguish from other diseases.
Symptoms often start with pain in the back, typically between the shoulder blades and in the neck, the pain worsens at night.
You may get nerve paralysis, especially paralysis of the facial nerve.
Neuroborreliose may also emerge as meningitis with fever, headaches and stiffness in the neck.
In rare cases the disease can be sustained with a slowly progressive destruction of the nervous system with paralysis, impaired hearing and the development of dementia.
Neuroborreliose requires immediate treatment
Arthritis (Lymeartritis)
It can be seen only rarely in Denmark. It may come days to years after the tick bite. Arthritis shown by pain and swelling of joints. Usually hit just one stage and rarely more than three limbs. Knees are the part that is affected most. Then follow the shoulders, elbows, feet and hips. It corresponds to rheumatic symptoms.
Effects of the heart
Finally Lyme disease may prove as heart inflammation with symptoms of heart rhythm disturbances and possibly heart failure.
How does the doctor diagnose Lyme disease?
Often, the story of a tick bite followed by some of the symptoms above, makes the physician think of Lyme disease.
To make the diagnosis with greater certainty, the physician may take a blood test to find out whether you have antibodies (the body antidotes against foreign substances) against Lyme in the blood. Antibodies are typically detected 2-4 weeks after infection, but sometimes it can take up to 8 weeks before the antibodies is shown in your blood. This means that you can have infection with Lyme, although the antibody test is negative. ATTENTION! Unfortunately, the antibody test is not a perfect sample of blood, and so-called false negatives occur quite often.
Likely development
With quick and adequate treatment, Erythema migrans and thus the disease will usually go in peace within about 14 days. Even without treatment, most cases go quietly by itself without leaving any permanent injury, but treatment reduces the risk of later symptoms of nervous system and joints.
Did you first have symptoms in the nervous system, joints or heart; it can take up to 2-3 years before you come over the symptoms. In a few cases it can develop as a lasting (chronic) disease with permanent injury. It may well come several years after the bite from the tick.
It can be very difficult to prove an infection. A report has shown that it takes an average of 22 months and seven doctors for a Lyme disease affected person to get diagnosed.
