Welcome to the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation

The Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation (CanLyme) was created to promote a more complete and comprehensive understanding of Lyme disease and related illnesses through research, education and advocacy to help reduce misdiagnosis and improve treatments for Lyme disease.

Get help for Lyme

Recognizing symptoms and learning how to talk to your doctor are the first steps towards treatment.

Learn more about Lyme

Understanding Lyme disease is the best way to prevent, diagnose and treat it.

Get the facts

Get the facts on ticks and tick-borne diseases. There are many myths! 

Recent dispatches

Meet Mario Levesque, a tireless advocate for patients living with long Lyme

ByEmmett ShaneJan 16, 202517 min read

Professor of Public Policy and Canadian Politics joins CanLyme’s advisory board.

Canadian Lyme Alliance conducting patient survey

ByMary KeatingJan 9, 20252 min read

Please consider taking 15 minutes to share your valuable input and experience.

Permethrin: An underused tool for prevention of tick-borne infection

ByDr. Sarah KeatingDec 10, 20242 min read

Permethrin treated clothing is often recommended as an evidence-based means of preventing tick bites. Unfortunately, in Canada, there are limited…

This giving season, your support changes lives

ByCanLyme TeamDec 2, 20242 min read

For over two decades, the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation has worked to raise awareness about Lyme disease and fight…

Where there are ticks, there’s often Lyme disease

Lyme disease is caused by an infection that is most often transmitted by ticks, but it can also be transmitted from mother to child during pregnancy.

Ticks can attach to your body without being seen or felt, and diagnosis can be difficult due to symptom presentation, testing protocols and other challenges. 

Learn to protect yourself

You can support our work

CanLyme is a registered Canadian charity. We rely on the financial support of donors. You can help save lives.

Stay connected

Sign up and get our occasional updates, educational resources, and news from our community of experts.

All of the tools in the most fully featured tick removal kit are on display.

Tick removal kits

We are a volunteer driven, registered charity. All proceeds go to education, prevention, awareness, research, and support.
A diagram of tick hotspots hover over top of an image of a hiker carrying a backpack.

Prevention tips

Regular tick checks are a way to check your body for crawling or embedded ticks. Check everywhere including these hotspots.
Mother and child sit together tenderly in the beautiful light streaming into the kitchen through a multi panel window.

Donate now

Your donation helps us to fund research and education for health care providers, advance prevention and awareness of Lyme disease – and more.
Illustrations in four panels of how to remove a tick by using tweezers and grabbing way low down near where it's embedded on the skin and pulling straight up, and then washing the skin around where it was embedded.

Tick removal

If you’ve discovered an embedded tick on yourself or someone else there are a few important things to remember.
A microscopic view of borrelia burgdorferi, a corkscrew shaped bacteria.

Lyme basics

Although it is most commonly associated with a tick bite, many people who have Lyme disease do not recall seeing or feeling a tick bite.
A woman walks with her two dogs along a path near in the forest.

Prevention

By taking the right precautions and spreading the word, you can effectively protect yourself, and your family, from Lyme.

More news

$2 million gift boosts University of Guelph Lyme research lab

ByCanLyme TeamDec 1, 20242 min read

A Canadian research lab dedicated to the study of Lyme disease got a big boost in November with a…

ILADS 2024: Moving the needle on tick borne disease

ByDr. Sarah KeatingNov 29, 20242 min read

Every year more Canadian health care practitioners are realizing the importance of tick borne and other chronic infections and…

CDC reconfirms Chronic Lyme, denies effectiveness of more antibiotics

ByCanLyme TeamNov 27, 20242 min read

Animal models of the disease show that persistent symptoms may be due to an interplay between persistent infection, immune…

Federal government still not listening to Lyme sufferers

ByEmmett ShaneNov 26, 20244 min read

Public health agency shelves report.

Travel makes tick diseases tougher to diagnose, paper finds

ByCanLyme TeamNov 19, 20243 min read

Climate change and increased travel are leading to significant diagnostic challenges and shifting epidemiology.

Machine learning algorithms help predict tick-borne pathogen risk across Europe

BySarah HackettNov 15, 20242 min read

A new study published in Annals of Medicine explores the potential for machine learning algorithms to predict the risk…

Study: Current and emerging approaches for alleviating persistent Lyme disease

BySarah HackettNov 8, 20242 min read

Prevention and the need for better diagnostic tools also recognized by researchers.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to Borrelia burgdorferi – an excellent backgrounder on Lyme disease for biologists

ByCanLyme TeamNov 5, 20244 min read

By the end of the review, you may discover that you have more in common with the bemused Arthur…

Recent snapshot of ticks, pathogens, and mammalian hosts in Southern Ontario and Quebec

ByRachel LiNov 4, 20243 min read

Interrogating mammal species richness as a predictor of the number of pathogens in black-legged ticks.