Of the 9,000 people included in the survey, 6 had actually been infected with another previously unidentified Lyme disease bacteria.
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The bacteria is called Borrelia mayonii, and was found by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), along with the Mayo Clinic and health officials from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota, the official statement said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the discovery of Borrelia mayonii on Monday. Both can be treated with anitbiotics.
News of the new species was published this month in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases. They found out that the two bacteria are closely related. It has been around since 1975, when it was first discovered in the Northeast. They also collected samples of the tick known to spread Lyme stateside, Ixodes scapularis (deer tick), in areas where they suspected the patients were infected. Since 1993, its prevalence has quadrupled.
Mayo Clinic scientists tested samples from U.S patients from 2003 to 2014 for evidence of Lyme disease using a PCR (polymerase chain reaction). Unusual results were identified in six people, and DNA sequencing helped confirm the discovery.
It is likely that the bacteria is a “recently emerged” organism since it did not appear in previous, extensive testing of blood samples of patients suspected of having Lyme disease, Peterson added. Those with more bacteria in the blood are the ones that were infected by the new bacteria.
But the new bacteria also causes a different kind of rash.
Rashes develop, but they are not in the bulls-eye pattern associated with the more common bacterium.
“One patient’s father said his son looked like a Dalmatian because of the spots all over him”, said study author Dr. Bobbi Pritt, a medical director in the division of clinical microbiology at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota. However, no patients have died from the new bacteria but two had to be hospitalized. An adult had trouble with vision, and was seeing double. Another still suffers with joint pain.
While Borrelia mayonii can be combated with the same class of antibiotics commonly administered against Borrelia burgdorferi, researchers haven’t yet determined if the newly identified pathogen is equally harmful or even more unsafe than its older counterpart. As CDC microbiologist, Jeannine Petersen, stated to Reuters, “We need more patients in order to capture the full spectrum of those who might have less severe symptoms and those who might have more severe ones”.
In research circles, the big group of bacterial species that cause Lyme is called B. burgdorferi sensu lato, while the North American germ is called B. burgdorferi sensu stricto (it’s also found in Europe).
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She hopes their study will encourage doctors and patients to be more aware of Lyme disease symptoms that aren’t typical.
