Lyme disease, the most prevalent tickborne infection in the United States, can vary greatly from one person to the next. The hallmark is said to be a bull’s-eye rash, yet the rash can take other shapes or not appear at all. Some patients suffer nerve damage, others heart block or swollen joints. Almost 20 percent report a flu-like condition marked by myalgia, arthralgia, and fatigue. Intensity veers wildly too: In one patient symptoms may be barely discernible; in another so incapacitating that life is derailed.
Now the reason for this inconsistency is becoming clear. In October a team of scientists published the sequences of the genomes of 13 strains of Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. “Different strains have different capacity to cause disease,” explains infectious-diseases physician Benjamin Luft of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “We now have a more complete picture of the ...
