As part of Lyme Disease Awareness Month in May, we saluted Polly Murray and Judith Mensch, “The Mothers Who Spoke Up”. In 1975, these women called the Health Department when their children and many others in their community of Lyme, Connecticut showed symptoms of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Their separate phone calls sounded an alarm that eventually led researchers to determine that the children had been infected with Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochetal bacterium that causes Lyme disease.
While Lyme disease was officially named in 1982, evidence of the pathogen that causes it dates back far earlier. Just how far back? In sequencing the full genomes of Borrelia burgdorferi, scientists at the Yale School of Public Health discovered that its evolutionary tree goes back 60,000 years in New England.
It’s no wonder that Lyme is sometimes thought of as a “woods of New England problem.” Lyme disease continues to be endemic to New England, but the black-legged ticks that carry Borrelia burgdorferi and other pathogens don’t just live in the woods; they’re also on lawns, in long grasses, in shrubs, in beach dunes, and in moist, shady areas like leaf piles and stone walls. And, due to factors like climate change, black-legged ticks are on the move. Cases of Lyme disease have been reported in every U.S. state except Hawaii, with 476,000 new cases reported annually.
Before Murray and Mensch put Lyme, Connecticut on the map, people were complaining of the “Nantucket flu.” Doctors on eastern Long Island were also hearing locals describe mysterious joint pain and rashes as “Montauk knee,” a term that had circulated in the region well before 1975. DNA-sequencing shows that ticks collected on Long Island in 1945 were infected with modern-day Borrelia burgdorferi, and studies show that mice in from Cape Cod, collected in 1894, were infected.
But that’s just the burgeoning history of Lyme disease in the U.S. A similar illness was described in Europe in the 20th century. Scientists have even discovered that “Ötzi the Ice Man,” whose body was found by German hikers in 1991 after he died some 5,300 years earlier, had evidence of Borrelia burgdorferi in his bones!
As ticks and their pathogens evolve, so too can the way pathogens manifest in humans. Lyme arthritis continues to be one manifestation of late-stage Lyme disease, but we now know that Lyme is a multi-system infection that can cause cardiac symptoms and cross the blood-brain barrier into the nervous system. Lyme disease has been around for quite some time, and we must continue to protect against it and fight for a cure for it.