Undiagnosed Lyme disease in adults with schizophrenia.
Published online Aug. 6th, 2015
ABSTRACT
Lyme disease (LD) is the world’s leading tick borne infection caused by the spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb). This infection is a global health concern and is associated with numerous cardiologic, dermatologic, rheumatologic neurologic, and psychiatric manifestations (Bratton et al., 2008). Only a few epidemiologic studies have evaluated the frequency of antibodies to Bb in psychiatric patients; one study found only 1/517 (0.2%) of all adult psychiatric patients had Lyme titer seropositivity (Nadelman et al., 1997) and the other larger study found that 322/926 (35%) of psychiatric inpatients had seropositivity to antibodies to Bb (Hajek et al., 2002).
