LYME AND HUMAN GRANULOCYTIC EHRLICHIOSIS

Report #6556 7/13/95

Recent research shows that most people who become ill within a few months of being bitten by a tick should take antibiotics.

The same tick that causes Lyme disease also causes another recently-described potentially fatal disease called Human Granulocytic Ehrlichiosis. In Lyme disease, you usually feel sick several days after a tick bite and develop a rash that often includes a classic bull's eye appearance. Human Granulocytic Ehrlichiosis is more difficult to diagnose because it causes no rash whatever. A few days after pulling off a tick, a person suddenly develops headache, nausea, a feeling of being sick, chills and muscle and joint pains.

If Infected people are not treated, they can go into shock and die, but if they receive the antibiotic, tetracycline, they usually recover rapidly. Lyme disease can be prevented 100% of the time if an infected person is given the appropriate antibiotic before he develops symptoms. It can still be cured if the person is treated before he gets the nerve damage or joint pains several months after exposure. However, there is no cure for Lyme disease once a person develops the late symptoms of joint and muscle aches and nerve damage.

Since Lyme disease can be treated and cured with early treatment of either tetracycline or ampicillin, many doctors treat tick bites with ampicillin. They avoid tetracycline because it increases a person's chances of sunburn. This new tick-born disease is resistant to ampicillin, so sickness after tick bites in older children and adults are more likely to be treated with tetracyclines, which can kill the germs that cause both Lyme disease and Human Granulocytic Ehrlichiosis.

By Gabe Mirkin, M.D., for CBS Radio News