TITLE:
Evaluation of Lyme Disease in a Health Worker, and Review of the Literature
AUTHORS:
Fulya Bayındır Bilman, Mevliye Yetik
KEYWORDS:
Lyme Disease, Borrelia burgdorferi
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.3 No.4,
April
29,
2016
ABSTRACT: Lyme disease (LD) is a multisystemic zoonotic infection disease that
occurs in the consequence of contamination of Borrelia type of spirochetes that ticks carry after they have
bitten. Typical clinic findings are on the skin and in joints. In this paper, the
study on heavy joint pain having suddenly been added to the profile and on
limitation of movement, and the process of getting the diagnosis of LD were
probed in the patient with lesions on her skin that occurred three months ago.
The case not having reported a history of being bitten by ticks and who was a
health professional was female patient of 41 years of age. In her examination,
a large number of lesions similar to fly bites were seen on the skin in the
periphery of extremities, and the patient, whose routine hematologic and
biochemical examinations were within normal limits, was determined to be Borrelia IgM positive and Borrelia IgG negative in the
enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) tests performed from peripheric
blood. Through these findings, cutaneous lesions and arthralgia were thought to
be related to Borrelia infection that
developed after the tick bite that took place months ago and was not realized.
The patient was treated with doxycycline (100 mg/day, 30 days) and prednisolone
(16 mg/day, 30 days, reducing the dose). As a supplementary treatment, vitamin
D was administered by way of IM as a support. Arthralgia and joint involvement
started to recover the second day. Lesions partly regresses in three days after
the treatment started. LD cases must be considered in the differential
diagnosis of infectious diseases that start with unexplained arthralgia at the
beginning and suspicious lesions on the skin, and the case is probed by scanning
literature over these concepts.