Lyme Disease Facts, Part 2
The
white-footed mouse: Where many ticks first pick up Lyme disease I’ve
been researching Lyme disease, and it’s like drinking from a firehose
that has advanced degrees in infectious diseases, immunology,
neuropathy, and pharmacology. In the meantime, some interesting factoids
with which you can annoy and educate your friends: • Some researchers
have likened the current state of knowledge about Lyme to what we knew
about AIDS in the 1980s. So we know a bit about it. There’s more that we
know we don’t know. And there’s almost certainly a lot that we don’t
know we don’t know. (Google “Rumsfeld, Donald, types of unknowns” if you
find this distinction confusing.) • It’s “Lyme” disease, not “Lyme’s.”
Lyme is a small town in Connecticut. In 1975, a woman there alerted
researchers at Yale to a bunch of kids who were thought to have
pediatric arthritis. In 1977, those researchers changed the name to
“Lyme arthritis.” In 1979, it was changed to “Lyme disease.” • The cause
of the disease wasn’t identified until 1982, when Dr. Willy Burgdorfer
somehow figured out it was transmitted by ticks of the Ixodes genus
(which includes deer ticks) that were themselves infected by the
disease. Ticks aren’t born with Lyme disease. They get it from infected
rodents, particularly the white-footed mouse.
