There do seem to be cases of that. Recent Lyme-related news suggests that such cases may be caused by repeated infections. This would seem to contradict the “no antibiotics” advice—at least for these patients. These were patients with multiple rashes, though—chronic Lyme disease is supposed to be different from that.
That is another article by Wormser. He studied cases of people who had repeated EM (bullseye rashes). The methodology is actually clever, looking at the OpsC protein. But of course he knows this is going to be cited out of context to imply that people with chronic Lyme are really just being re-infected. As you noticed, the bullseye rash usually occurs immediately after infection. Most people with chronic Lyme don’t get repeated rashes, and this study is irrelevant to them.
Recent Lyme-related news suggests that such cases may be caused by repeated infections.
This makes sense — people who have gotten Lyme are not much more likely than others to move out of the Northeast U.S. or stay out of the woods, those being pretty much how to avoid exposure.
The article I cited suffers somewhat from sampling error though. You can’t really sample from those with migrating rashes—and then draw conclusions about the prevalence of repeat infections as an explanation for chronic cases.
There do seem to be cases of that. Recent Lyme-related news suggests that such cases may be caused by repeated infections. This would seem to contradict the “no antibiotics” advice—at least for these patients. These were patients with multiple rashes, though—chronic Lyme disease is supposed to be different from that.
That is another article by Wormser. He studied cases of people who had repeated EM (bullseye rashes). The methodology is actually clever, looking at the OpsC protein. But of course he knows this is going to be cited out of context to imply that people with chronic Lyme are really just being re-infected. As you noticed, the bullseye rash usually occurs immediately after infection. Most people with chronic Lyme don’t get repeated rashes, and this study is irrelevant to them.
This makes sense — people who have gotten Lyme are not much more likely than others to move out of the Northeast U.S. or stay out of the woods, those being pretty much how to avoid exposure.
The article I cited suffers somewhat from sampling error though. You can’t really sample from those with migrating rashes—and then draw conclusions about the prevalence of repeat infections as an explanation for chronic cases.