All about Lyme Disease

The Lecture describes the clinical manifestations of Lyme Disease including the stages of Lyme disease and the signs and symptoms associated with the illness. It provides the progression of the disease through hours, days and weeks,  the different stages, definitions of signs and symptoms and the details of the three most common manifestations of Lyme disease, the main one being arthritis.

This Lecture provides the main sets of epidemiological data from 2014 and 2015, mainly: the number of cases reported in the US (2014), the 14 main states that are affected with the illness (2015), terminology related to Lyme disease.

This Lecture provides a description of the tick in terms of its biological classification and nomenclature, and the most importantly, explains in detail the stages of the tick and then the life cycle of the tick vector, in which humans are the inadvertent hosts, that is being bit by accident, as the main hosts for the black-legged tick are actually the white-tailed deer and the white-footed mouse. Interestingly, the life cycle of the tick follows through all four seasons of the year. 

This Lecture provides details on the classification of the bacteria as Gram-negative bacteria (according to Gram-staining, covered in the Basics of Medical Microbiology Course) and yet describes how the spirochete is unique in the fact that it lacks  LPS and instead has an abundance of lipoproteins and an endoflagella. It also focuses on the interesting fact that Borrelia changes the expression of its surface lipoproteins during its transmission between the host and tick environments. 

This lecture focuses on the overall diagnosis of Lyme disease, which is accomplished by a combination of both clinical and lab diagnosis. It highlights the 2-step process directed by the CDC and in doing so, it explains in detail not only how each lab test is done but also the reasoning behind the lab test results.

This lecture highlights the Antibiotic treatment given for this bacterial infection and mentions the few cases in which the treatment does not work probably due to an auto-immune reaction that leaves the patient still symptomatic.

It also provides with the main methods of prevention, from avoiding the tick habitat entirely to pulling the tick from the skin to the challenges of making an effective vaccine with minimal side effects in case of a Borrelia burgdorferi established infection.

This Conclusion is actually in the form of a summary. It summarizes the importance of studying Lyme disease. It also gives a background knowledge of the illness, and finally it reminds the audience of the purpose of this Course.