Stanford study says ticks may cause double trouble

Commentary: The tick-borne relapsing fever bacteria, Borrelia miyamotoi, which causes a Lyme-like illness, has now been proven to have spread across the United States. Previous studies showed B. miyamotoi present in ticks in the Northeast, and now it is being found in California. Medical researchers in the San Franscisco area recently found that ticks were infected with both Borrelia burgdorferi and Borrelia miyamotoi in nearly every park they examined. The findings raise the question of whether B. miyamotoi has gone undetected in California residents, and whether a significant proportion of people who test negative for Lyme disease, have acquired a different borrelia spirochete, accounting for their Lyme-like illness. I discuss B. miyamotoi and its clinical manifestations on pages 124-126 of my book. A commercially available blood test to diagnose B. miyamotoi was just recently released, and needs to be validated in clinical practice:.

Stanford study says ticks may cause double trouble, by Rob Jordan, Stanford News