The rates of Lyme disease — and the serious, often debilitating symptoms it can cause — have been rising steadily across the U.S. and throughout the world. In fact, health experts from the Wildlife Conservation Society just released a report listing 12 pathogens, including the agents behind avian flu, Ebola, cholera, and Lyme disease, which are likely to invade new regions as a result of global climate change. Other experts are reporting that the ticks that carry the Lyme disease bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, once thought to be transmitted only by deer and mice, can also be spread by chipmunks and other small animals.

With roughly 20,000 new cases reported each year to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne infection in the United States. Yet Lyme disease is hardly at the top of many researchers’ rosters, says Dr. Harriet Kotsoris, neurologist and medical advisor to Time for Lyme, Inc., a research, education and advocacy group that along with the Lyme Disease Association recently endowed the first Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center. This center is at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City dedicated to the study of chronic Lyme disease.

Why? For one thing, while everyone agrees that rates of Lyme infection continue to rise, there’s no consensus on why they’re rising. Since the early ‘90s, the annual number of reported cases has more than doubled. This reflects a growing problem
which may only represent the tip of the iceberg. Both testing and surveillance methods are inefficient, which leaves thousands undiagnosed and therefore uncounted. To further complicate matters, many experts argue that Lyme disease is over-reported (others say it’s under-reported), and most observers agree that there are significant differences in the way Lyme disease is diagnosed and tracked in various states in the U.S.

Another topic of debate is the disease itself — more specifically, the way it can manifest itself in the months and years after the initial infection. Many experts argue that chronic or long-term Lyme can produce a long list of symptoms, including neurological and psychiatric problems, while others contend that the condition doesn’t even exist. Just last year, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article disputing the existence of chronic Lyme — and essentially ignoring more than 19,000 scientific studies on tick-borne illnesses in the process.

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