This print article was in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. The doctor solving the mystery is Dr. Brian Fallon of the Columbia Lyme disease research program. I thought he was very thorough.
Posted by marie (Member # 3980) on :
I can't get into the article on-line. Can you tell me what the woman had and what tests concluded diagnosis? Thanks.
Posted by Ann-Ohio (Member # 44364) on :
It was b. miyamotoi. There is a test and it is treated with doxycycline.
Here are the concluding paragraphs of the story> (I split it up for easier reading.
"Because her symptoms weren’t typical, Fallon also ordered tests to investigate other possibilities. Rheumatoid arthritis (R.A.) often causes joint pain that can be worse in the hands. Celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder, can cause this combination of gastrointestinal distress and joint pain.
He also checked her thyroid hormones, her red-blood-cell count and calcium level. The results came back over the next couple of weeks: She wasn’t anemic. Her calcium was normal. It wasn’t her thyroid. She didn’t have celiac disease or R.A. She didn’t have Lyme disease either. Nor did she have babesiosis or ehrlichiosis.
Only one result was positive — the test for a distant cousin of Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme. It’s called Borrelia miyamotoi, and it causes one of the newest tick-borne diseases.
The first cases, in Russia, were reported in 2011. Cases were reported in the U.S. two years later. B. miyamotoi, like Lyme, is carried by the black-legged deer tick, but it’s a much easier infection to get.
[Now here is the usual "iffy" information - Ann]
With Lyme, the tick has to be attached to a body for two to three days before the bug can be transmitted. That’s because B. burgdorferi lives deep in the tick’s gut. But B. miyamotoi lives in the tick’s mouth and can invade the body almost immediately. [End of "iffy-ness]
When untreated, B. miyamotoi can cause recurrent episodes of illness because of an unusual ability to fool the immune system by changing its outer layer.
Once it has eluded our disease-fighting antibodies by the equivalent of changing clothes, it can reproduce again and produce a new round of fever, headache, fatigue and body pain that characterize this as well as most other tick-borne infections.
Fallon was a little surprised by the unusual result, but it made sense. The patient had been on Long Island where there are many ticks. And she reported this unusual relapsing fever. He called her with the news.
She was ecstatic to finally have an answer. The recommended treatment is two weeks of an antibiotic called doxycycline."
[ 07-21-2020, 10:34 PM: Message edited by: Ann-Ohio ]
Posted by Ann-Ohio (Member # 44364) on :