What is Lyme Disease?

Historically, Lyme disease is associated with a bacterial infection of Borrelia burgdorferi transmitted through a tick bite. This infection was, and has been presumed to resolve easily with a relatively brief course of antibiotics. However, a significant percentage of patients do not experience such a resolution of symptoms. Additionally, many patients have never had a known tick bite nor the classic bulls eye rash, and do not develop identifiable symptoms until long after whatever exposure they may have had— Further complicating the matter, as professionals have dedicated their careers to treating these patients, many have come to the conclusion that what we call Lyme disease is most often not solely caused by infection with Borrelia. Rather it is a multifaceted multi-systemic illness with complex etiological (causal) factors including exposure to other pathogenic microbes, toxins, chronic immune and nervous system dysfunction. Some have begun using the term Lyme Plus (+), or Lyme Complex to signify this reality.