That can mean you’ve acquired Lyme disease, a bacterial infection that’s caused by a germ called Borrelia burgdoferi. Blacklegged tick bites are the primary cause of Lyme disease, and these critters are most active during the warmer summer months. They can affix themselves to your body or clothes during outdoor excursions and administer a tiny bite. It's particularly hard for medical professionals to diagnose because the tick may drop off quietly, unnoticed, at least until symptoms begin to manifest.
Lyme disease is sometimes mistaken by medical professionals for chronic fatigue syndrome, which presents with similar complaints of overwhelming tiredness that never seems to abate and terribly aching joints. It’s only when a rash starts to appear that the true nature of your complaints may become clear. Subsequent laboratory tests can determine whether Lyme disease is at work.
The symptoms of Lyme disease include the aforementioned fatigue accompanied by headaches, fever and a skin rash called Erythema Migrans (commonly referred to as EM). If left untreated, the disease can worsen and begin to affect joints, the heart and the nervous system.
Lyme Disease Statistics
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that as many as 25,000 confirmed cases of Lyme disease may have occurred in the United States in 2014, and there may be as many as 33,000 cases in which the disease is suspected but not confirmed. That makes Lyme disease the most common vector-borne illness (a term used in epidemiology to describe a person, animal or microorganism that transmits an infectious pathogen into a living host) in the United States and the fifth most common nationally notifiable disease. Most cases occur in the Northeast and upper Midwest, though outbreaks can occur anywhere.