"It makes intuitive sense that more Bb-resistant hosts in the wild should lower the risk of human infection. But nothing about Lyme disease is simple. It turns out that even a species completely immune to Lyme infection can amplify the risk for people."
"That phenomenon was illustrated in a recent experiment on Lyme disease ecology in California. The western fence lizard is an important host for disease-bearing ticks there but is resistant to Bb. Its immune response to the bacterium is so powerful that a lizard can actually clear the infection from the midgut of ticks feeding on it. This ability would seem to make the fence lizard the ultimate dilution host, and when researchers removed the lizards from test plots in oak woodlands, they expected the numbers of infected nymphal ticks to increase as a result. But the opposite occurred."
Lyme Disease Debate
www.medscape.com
This new article gives an overview of how Lyme disease was discovered, and describes how it has become one of the most common vectorborne infections in North America and how it affects humans.
