Lyme disease seemed to be the newest plague. Once people became aware of the new microbe and the illness it caused, cases started popping up all over New England and beyond. Burgdorfer), and the illness was aptly termed Lyme disease after its place of origin. The microbe was named Borrelia burgdorferi (after Dr. Burgdorfer and his colleagues isolated the microbial culprit, a corkscrew-like organism (called a spirochete), from the blood of the victims, and a new pathogen rose to the forefront. Willy Burgdorfer noticed that the symptoms of this new illness had striking similarities to a tick-borne condition long recognized in Europe called erythema migrans (EM), named for the associated rash migrating from a tick bite. The real offender wouldn’t enter the spotlight until 1981, when a researcher named Dr. The illness, characterized by arthritis and an unusual rash around the tick bite, was first thought to originate from a viral agent. Incidentally, it was at a time when more and more people were moving out of cities and into the suburbs to build homes in the tick-filled wooded countryside. It might have flown under the radar if not for one significant detail: A cluster of people (39 children and 12 adults), all bitten by ticks, also suddenly became ill simultaneously. In 1975, a mysterious illness causing arthritis in children showed up in Lyme, Connecticut and adjacent communities in the United States.

Western blot test lyme accuracy