Research Article

The analysis of the course of early localized Lyme disease among patients of the infectious diseases clinic in Szczecin

Magdalena Witak-Jędra, Jolanta Niścigorska-Olsen, Agnieszka Kotowicz-Laurans, Miłosz Parczewski

1. Acta Sci. Pol. Zootechnica, 12(3), 2013, 79‒88

Abstract. Lyme disease (also known as borreliosis) is defined as an infectious disease caused by a spirochete called Borrelia burgdorferi. It occurs in three stages: early localized infection, early disseminated infection and late persistent infections that affect many organs. In order to assess the clinical course, including the transition to the late persistent infection stage, medical records of a group of 175 patients, who reported at the Infectious Disease Clinic in Szczecin after treating chronic erythema in 2004, were analyzed. Clinical symptoms, presence of serological exponents and frequency of transition into the late persistent infection stage were assessed. In majority of the observed patients, the infection was limited to erythema migrans. Average time, in which serological negativization in the IgM class occurred was 13.2 months, 15 people throughout the observation time showed the presence of antibodies in the IgM class, which were not associated with clinical exponents of the disease. In 8 patients (4.6%) the infection turned into a chronic-arthral form. Lyme borreliosis, when properly treated and taken care of in the first stage, rarely becomes a chronic disease.

Keywords: antiborreliosis antibodies, Borrelia burgdorferi, chronic Lyme disease,\ erythema migrans, Lyme disease