Could this shot end Lyme disease forever?

Fast Company

6 hours ago

The list of summertime scourges grows longer each year: wildfires, heat waves, floods. And we can now add to that a veritable infestation of biting, Lyme-disease-carrying ticks. Emergency room visits for tick bites in the Northeast are at their highest levels in at least five years. This June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 229 tick bites per every 100,000 visits to ERs around the Northeast, up from 167 bites per 100,000 visits a year earlier.
Nationwide, more than 89,000 cases of Lyme disease were reported to the CDC in 2023 through state health departments. But a CDC analysis of insurance claims suggests that actual cases of people seeking treatment for Lyme disease—transmitted by black-legged ticks infected with Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria—could be about 476,000 annually.
While most cases still occur in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and upper Midwest regions, climate change is expanding the ticks' habitat, and the transmission season is getting longer, starting earlier each spring and stretching well into late fall. (Ticks can be active any time the temperature is above freezing.)
If you spot the symptoms—a target-like rash, fever, headache, extreme fatigue—early enough, treating Lyme disease with antibiotics has a high success rate. But Lyme disease is often undetected and untreated, and that can lead to long-term, chronic problems with the joints, heart, and nervous system.