Tick bites in the summer can be a dangerous possibility of getting a severe skin disease called borreliosis. The peak incidence is in the season from May to September. The danger of borreliosis is that its early manifestations can resemble a cold or an allergy, so the diagnosis is not always correct. But if timely adequate therapy is not carried out, then the joints, nervous and cardiovascular systems will be involved in the pathological process, and the disease will become incurable and may cause the patient's disability.

 

Dermal borreliosis, or Lyme disease, is an inflammatory disease caused by spirochetes and carried by ticks, and is one of the most common infections spread by these blood-sucking parasites. For the first time, this disease was talked about about 40 years ago, when & nbsp; in the American town of Lyme, several cases of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis in combination with erythema migrans were registered, tests were carried out and it was found that spirochete-like microorganisms isolated from ticks became the cause of the disease.

 

Characteristic signs of borreliosis and the course of the disease

The early manifestation of borreliosis is a bit like the symptoms of a cold or a severe allergy, when the patient experiences headaches, chills, loss of strength, muscle aches, sometimes a runny nose and sore throat. A characteristic sign of borreliosis can be stiffness of the neck muscles, as well as redness gradually spreading in a ring over the skin around the site of the tick bite. Nausea and vomiting, conjunctivitis, lymphadenopathy may develop.

Usually, a patient who sees a rash on the skin at the site of a tick bite goes to a dermatologist and receives treatment for an allergic reaction to the tick bite. However, the doctor should pay special attention to the nature of the erythema – with borreliosis, redness migrates in all directions, sometimes up to 20-60 cm in diameter, and its edges are intensely colored and slightly rise above the skin surface in the form of a ring. The patient complains of discomfort in the area of ​​erythema, sometimes even burning, pain and itching.

In about every fifth patient, skin rashes remain the only manifestation of borreliosis at its first stage. But without proper treatment, the disease does not go away by itself, and after a while it passes into the later stages – neurological and cardiological symptoms of borreliosis develop. Patients experience shortness of breath, dizziness, palpitations, symptoms can manifest as meningitis, facial paralysis. The third stage can form even two years after the tick bite. It is usually manifested by atrophic acrodermatitis and joint damage – progressive arthritis. Presumably, some psychoses, convulsive conditions, vasculitis of cerebral vessels, progressive encephalopathy can be caused by borreliosis.

 

Treatment of borreliosis – drug selection tactics

It is very important to start therapy for borreliosis as early as possible in order to prevent its transition to advanced stages. If treatment with antibacterial drugs is started at the first stage, and there are no signs of damage to the joints, heart, nervous system, then the likelihood of complications is quite low.

At an early stage, tetracycline antibiotics are considered the drug of choice in the treatment of borreliosis. But if there are already signs of damage to the nervous and cardiovascular systems, then their appointment is inappropriate and can even cause relapses of the disease. In this case, it is advisable to prescribe cephalosporins.

The risk of developing complications in borreliosis is associated with the severity of clinical manifestations in the first stage of the disease, with the time of initiation of treatment, the correct choice of an antibacterial drug, dosage and duration of administration.

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