Chronic Lyme Symptoms

Lyme disease is an illness that develops after a tick bite. Deer ticks harbor a bacterium called Borrelia borgdurferi which causes infection in humans. Living near grassy and wooded areas increases your risk of a tick bite. Lyme disease becomes chronic without early diagnosis and treatment.

Causes

• Deer ticks harbor the infectious bacterium for Lyme disease. These ticks are the size of a grain of sand and brown in color. The deer tick must attach himself to your skin and access your bloodstream before you can be infected. This may take at least 48 hours.

Early Symptoms

• In its early stages, Lyme disease will typically present an expanding skin rash that is circular and will take on the appearance of a bull's eye. Not all people infected with Lyme disease will have a rash but most will. The rash will be accompanied by flu-like symptoms such as fatigue, muscle aches and pains, slight fever and headache.

Chronic Symptoms

• As the disease progresses with no treatment, symptoms will become more serious and chronic. Joints will stiffen and swell. Knees will likely be affected with pain and stiffness. Muscle movement will become impaired as soon as weeks or as long as years after untreated infection. In later stages of the disease, you may have trouble concentrating, have memory loss and experience changes in your personality. The membranes in your brain may become inflamed causing meningitis or Bell's palsy, a numbness on one side of your face may also occur. Inflammation may occur in the heart muscle causing heart failure. Arthritis, depression and anxiety may also appear during the late states.

Diagnosis

• The bull's eye rash is the hallmark of Lyme disease, but not all people will have this rash. Other diagnostic tests will include an ELISA test which detects antibodies to Lyme disease. A test called the Western blot test detects antibodies to proteins of the B. burgdorferi bacterium and confirms diagnosis.

Treatment

• Early stages of the illness may be treated with antibiotic medications such as amoxicillin or doxycycline. A 14 to 21 day course of medications will be prescribed and all medications should be taken to avoid reinfection of bacteria that was not killed initially. Lyme disease that has progressed past the early stages will need antibiotics given intravenously. This treatment will typically last 14 to 28 days and although this should destroy all bacteria, symptoms may linger for weeks or months. Over the counter drugs such as Motrin or Advil may be recommended for pain and aspirin for inflammation. Discuss with your doctor any over the counter medications before taking.