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Here are helpful resources and information from various organizations and websites that many of our patients have found helpful.

What is Lyme disease?

Lyme disease is a bacterial infection that is transmitted almost exclusively by Deer tick bites. Unfortunately these ticks are abundant in our neck of the woods. In our previous article, the importance of Lyme disease prevention was stressed through prompt and appropriate tick removal and antibiotic prophylaxis. Prophylaxis is the medical term used when a health care provider utilizes a therapy in an attempt to prevent a disease.

Why is it so important to not get Lyme disease? When individuals are first infected with Lyme disease, they may or may not develop the bulls eye rash which can confirm the infection. It has been proven that the bulls’ eye rash is the least common rash of Lyme disease. More commonly, the rash is nonspecific. The only significant clue is that the rash of Lyme disease does not occur immediately at the time of tick bite, but somewhere within three days to three weeks after the bite.

During and after this period infected individuals may develop symptoms as if they have the flu such as headache, aches and pains, low-grade fevers, and fatigue. Some will develop classic Lyme arthritis (painful swollen joints which predominately involve the knees, hands and wrists). Many will have no symptoms at all! At this stage oral antibiotics given appropriately for thirty days will cure over 85% of cases.

What is most concerning is the fact that if individuals who develop early Lyme disease are not treated, after a few days to weeks the rashes if there is one, will disappear as well as their symptoms, but they are still infected. Next week, we will describe this other Lyme disease medically defined as late stage Lyme disease.

The Haverford Wellness Center under the direction of Domenic Braccia D.O. is dedicated to the accurate diagnosis and reasonable treatment of Lyme disease and other tick borne diseases. Dr. Braccia, and the staff of the Haverford Wellness Center are fully equipped and capable of managing all aspects of Lyme disease and the other tick borne diseases from prevention and management of early disease to the most complex diagnostic and therapeutic cases. These cases include treatment failures, and late stage Lyme disease patients who have been ill for many years.