For scientists and clinicians alike, one of the Holy Grails for successfully treating and curing Lyme disease is developing tests that identify the disease sooner, show when people are cured of infection, and can diagnose reinfection.
You don't have to go far to find ticks. Just step outside and look for some grass. Look to the top of the shiny, green blade – usually ankle high. A tick might be there, waiting.
UMD receives new funding to stop infection from Lyme disease pathogens before it begins
The University of Maryland (UMD) received new funding from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation to develop novel therapeutic strategies that have the potential to stop infection from Lyme disease pathogens before it begins. Unlike traditional antibiotic treatments for Lyme disease that attack the pathogen directly and put it on the defensive, Utpal Pal and his team in the UMD Department of Veterinary Medicine are working in close collaboration with the National Institutes of Health s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NIH-NCATS) to explore antimicrobials that would interfere with the pathogen on a biomolecular level to inhibit it from causing an infection in the first place.
US-based researchers – at Colorado State University and the Northern Arizona University – have discovered that disease-causing ticks are finding their way onto beachfront properties, including infestations in woodlands and beaches around North California.
Abstract
We evaluated MarketScan, a large commercial insurance claims database, for its potential use as a stable and consistent source of information on Lyme disease diagnoses in the United States. The age, sex, and geographic composition of the enrolled population during 2010–2018 remained proportionally stable, despite fluctuations in the number of enrollees. Annual incidence of Lyme disease diagnoses per 100,000 enrollees ranged from 49 to 88, ≈6–8 times higher than that observed for cases reported through notifiable disease surveillance. Age and sex distributions among Lyme disease diagnoses in MarketScan were similar to those of cases reported through surveillance, but proportionally more diagnoses occurred outside of peak summer months, among female enrollees, and outside high-incidence states. Misdiagnoses, particularly in low-incidence states, may account for some of the observed epidemiologic differences. Commercial claims provide a stable data source to monitor tren