In 1975, many people in and around Lyme, Connecticut, were desperate for answers. More than fifty area residents were suffering from mysterious headaches, skin rashes, swollen knees, fever, and fatigue. When local doctors could not identify what was causing these symptoms or how to treat them, some patients sought assistance from doctors at the Yale School of Medicine and officials at the Connecticut State Department of Health.
Doctors Allan Steere and Stephen Malawista of the Yale School of Medicine spearheaded the efforts to solve this medical mystery. They began their investigation by examining people who were affected by this strange illness. They observed that many of these patients had a high rate of arthritis, a painful joint condition; however, blood samples and other tests could not determine the cause of the arthritis or the other symptoms. Moreover, most patients reported they had developed a rash that looked like a small red circle surrounded by a larger one. This bull's-eye shaped rash appeared about four weeks before their symptoms arose.
Armed with this useful clue, the Department of Health worked alongside the doctors at Yale to conduct patient surveys. The results indicated that the disease was most prevalent among residents of wooded areas away from town centers. Most of the mystery-illness patients spent substantial time outdoors engaged in gardening, landscaping, or recreation. Many reported that their earliest symptoms occurred during the warm-weather months.
Researchers suspected the disease—which they called "Lyme disease"—was likely spread by a vector such as an insect or another type of bug. Some patients recalled being bitten by a tick before falling ill. Ticks are parasites that feed on the blood of mammals and birds. Like spiders, they are small, eight-legged arachnids. Ticks can pick up microbes, or germs, from animals they bite and pass the microbes on to other hosts. Investigators eventually determined that the black-legged tick, also known as the deer tick, transmitted the disease to humans. But not all of the tick bites resulted in illness, and researchers still did not know exactly what caused the disease—was it a virus? A parasite? Thus, they weren't sure about the best course of treatment.
One of the researchers, a scientist named Willy Burgdorfer, began inspecting the deer ticks that had been preserved by Lyme officials. In 1982, he discovered that a specific type of bacteria was causing the disease. This bacteria, known today as Borrelia burgdorferi, sometimes passes from wildlife, like deer and mice, to black-legged ticks and then to humans. Thanks to this discovery, doctors finally knew which antibiotics to prescribe to treat Lyme disease effectively.
Even with this new information, mysteries surrounding Lyme disease persist. Questions linger about where it originated and when it began to spread. Despite its reputation as a fairly new disease, evidence shows that Lyme disease has existed for a long time in different parts of the world. In 1883, a German scientist named Alfred Buchwald observed a bull's-eye skin rash on a patient suffering from what scientists now believe was Lyme disease. Even more striking, the body of a 5,300-year-old frozen mummy, discovered in the snowy Alps of Europe, was found to contain Borrelia burgdorferi.
In recent years, Lyme disease has spread quickly, infecting hundreds of thousands of people annually in the United States. Thankfully, we know that avoiding tick bites will prevent Lyme disease. Experts recommend that people use tick repellent and wear long sleeves and pants in areas where ticks are common. When a tick bite does occur, it is important to promptly seek medical care if a rash or other symptoms develop. Early treatment with antibiotics can lower the risk of developing Lyme disease or reduce the severity of symptoms, such as arthritis. There is also more good news from medical researchers: experts are working on a vaccine to provide stronger protection against Lyme disease.
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