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  • Duke Medicine
    Reply

    Tick season is here and it's important to take precautions. Watch this video to learn how undiagnosed lyme diease led Duke breast cancer researcher Neil Spector to need a heart transplant.

  • Tom Grier
    Reply

    This is a story I have heard many times in 25 years including my own similar story. I hope as a physician he can make a difference with the Medical Community since they don't listen to the Lyme patients telling them the system is broken. Tom Grier – Lyme Disease Survival Manual 1995 I hope no more symptoms reappear !

  • Abigail Stewart
    Reply

    Lyme Disease is NOT rare in Florida. They just don't diagnose it and people go out of state for testing and treatment.

  • Lyme Disease Challenge
    Reply

    Lyme Disease is underreported, but not rare in Florida. We are facing a major health crisis. Lyme Disease cases in Florida are underestimated for the following reasons: Existing tests for Lyme Disease were only designed to test a single strain, when several species have been found to infect humans in Florida.Florida does not receive federal funding to track Lyme Disease cases. When doctors and patients think a disease is "rare," it is not on their diagnostic radar screen. Health care providers in Florida frequently disregard CDC positive lab tests as a "false positive" which means that the case will not be counted by the Health Department.Tick studies, including the study used to develop the Lyme risk map, include very few (if any) ticks from southern states (see e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3366527/ and http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/20/10/13-1583_article) and do not test ticks that are prevalent in the South for borrelia infections (i.e. the Lone Star and dog ticks).Notably, Florida’s warm, humid climate results in year round tick activity. Dr. Kerry Clark, a University of North Florida professor of epidemiology and environmental health, has found Borrelia burgdorferi (the bacteria that causes Lyme Disease) in ticks in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Dr. Clark’s research has revealed that Lyme-carrying ticks are spreading the illness here at vastly higher rates than what public health statistics and experts have suggested.

  • Mike Wilson
    Reply

    Deer ticks (blag legged ticks) are more prevalent in the winter months, so all seasons are Lyme and tick borne illness seasons