Lyme Disease News

June 26, 2025

Top Headlines

Forest Management Can Influence Health Benefits

May 20, 2025 — Forests play a crucial role in promoting health and wellbeing, but not all forests provide the same benefits. A large-scale study demonstrates how specific forest characteristics -- such as canopy density and tree species diversity -- can affect ...

Once Bitten, Animals Develop Resistance That Shrinks Tick Population

May 3, 2025 — Just in time for tick season, new research is shining a light on how animals develop resistance to tick bites, which points toward the possibility of developing more effective vaccines against the tiny, disease-carrying ...

The Antibiotic That Takes the Bite out of Lyme

Apr. 23, 2025 — Piperacillin, an antibiotic in the same class as penicillin, effectively cured mice of Lyme disease at 100-times less than the effective dose of doxycycline, the current gold standard treatment. At such a low dose, piperacillin also had the added ...

Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome May Be Driven by Remnants of Infection

Apr. 23, 2025 — Scientists believe they know what causes the treated infection to mimic chronic illness: the body may be responding to remnants of the bacteria that causes Lyme that tend to pool in the liver and joint ...

How Zika Virus Knocks out Our Immune Defenses

Mar. 25, 2025 — This research comes as many mosquito-borne viruses are spreading ...

Researchers Discover Achilles Heel of Lyme Disease Pathogen

Mar. 20, 2025 — Researchers have discovered that an enzyme can serve as an ideal target for developing new therapeutics against Lyme disease, and most likely other tick-borne diseases as ...

International Shark Attack File Report: Unprovoked Shark Bites Plummeted in 2024

Feb. 11, 2025 — 2024 was an exceptionally calm year for shark bites. Worldwide, there were only 47 unprovoked attacks, down 22 from the previous year and well below the 10-year average of ...

Mosquitoes Can Be Extra-Bitey in Droughts

Jan. 16, 2025 — Mosquitoes can survive prolonged droughts by drinking blood, which helps to explain why rates of mosquito-borne illness don't always decline in dry ...

Breakthrough Could Revolutionize Future of Tick Control

Nov. 27, 2024 — Scientists create potential for genetic tools to control disease-spreading ...

Discovery Illuminates How Sleeping Sickness Parasite Outsmarts Immune Response

Oct. 30, 2024 — A new study sheds light on how the blood-borne parasite that causes African sleeping sickness in humans and related diseases in cattle and other animals establishes long-term infections in hosts. ...

Lyme Borreliosis: New Approach for Developing Targeted Therapy

Oct. 23, 2024 — Lyme borreliosis is the most common tick-borne infectious disease in Europe. Up to 70,000 new cases are estimated each year in Austria alone. The bacterial infection can cause lasting health problems for patients. A research team has made ...

In a Warming World, Public Needs to Know More About Protections from Mosquito-Borne Illnesses

Oct. 10, 2024 — Driven in part by climate change, epidemics from mosquito-spread viruses are occurring with increasing frequency. Yet few among the American public are worried about getting West Nile or dengue virus ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:46pm EDT

Rates of a Tick-Borne Parasitic Disease Are on the Rise

Oct. 10, 2024 — Rates of babesiosis, a tick-borne parasitic disease, increased an average of 9% per year in the United States between 2015 and 2022 and four in 10 patients were found to be co-infected with another ...

Mosquitoes Sense Infrared from Body Heat to Help Track Humans Down

Aug. 22, 2024 — While a mosquito bite is often no more than a temporary bother, in many parts of the world it can be scary. One mosquito species, Aedes aegypti, spreads the viruses that cause over 100,000,000 cases ...

Scientists Map DNA of Lyme Disease Bacteria

Aug. 15, 2024 — Researchers have produced a genetic analysis of Lyme disease bacteria that may pave the way for improved diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of the tick-borne ...

New Visual Technique Could Advance Early Detection of Neurodegenerative Diseases

Aug. 10, 2024 — Researchers developed a new visual diagnostic technique that can be used to advance early detection for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's ...

Trying to Limit Calories? Skip the Dip, Researchers Advise

Aug. 1, 2024 — Snacks provide, on average, about one-fourth of most people's daily calories. With nearly one in three adults in the United States overweight and more than two in five with obesity, researchers are ...

Virus That Causes COVID-19 Is Widespread in Wildlife, Scientists Find

July 29, 2024 — SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, is widespread among wildlife species, according to new research. The virus was detected in six common backyard species, and antibodies indicating prior ...

New Antidote for Cobra Bites Discovered

July 18, 2024 — Cobras kill thousands of people a year worldwide and current antivenom treatment is expensive and does not effectively treat the necrosis of the flesh where the bite occurs. Using CRISPR technology, ...

Researchers Pinpoint Brain Cells That Delay First Bite of Food

July 10, 2024 — Do you grab a fork and take a first bite of cake, or say no and walk away? Our motivation to eat is driven by a complex web of cells in the brain that use signals from within the body, as well as ...

Bartonella DNA Found in Blood of Patients With Psychosis

June 10, 2024 — A new study has found that patients diagnosed with schizophrenia or another psychotic disorder are three times more likely to have Bartonella DNA in their blood than adults without these disorders. ...

Chronic Wasting Disease Unlikely to Move from Animals to People

May 22, 2024 — A new study of prion diseases, using a human cerebral organoid model, suggests there is a substantial species barrier preventing transmission of chronic wasting disease (CWD) from cervids -- deer, ...

In the Northeast, 50% of Adult Ticks Carry Lyme Disease Carrying Bacteria

Jan. 17, 2025 — Across most of the Northeast, getting bitten by a blacklegged tick-- also called a deer tick -- is a risk during spring, summer, and fall. A new Dartmouth study, published in Parasites and Vectors, ...

Robotic System Feeds People With Severe Mobility Limitations

May 9, 2024 — Researchers have developed a robotic feeding system that uses computer vision, machine learning and multimodal sensing to safely feed people with severe mobility limitations, including those with ...

Potential New Treatment Path for Lasting Lyme Disease Symptoms

Apr. 18, 2024 — Researchers have identified a potential new treatment for persistent neurological symptoms of Lyme disease, commonly seen even after antibiotic use. The study found that fibroblast growth factor ...

Size of Salty Snack Influences Eating Behavior That Determines Amount Consumed

Apr. 10, 2024 — The size of an individual snack piece not only influences how fast a person eats it, but also how much of it they eat, according to a new study. With nearly a quarter of daily calorie intake in the ...

How the Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus Enters Our Cells

Mar. 28, 2024 — Researchers have identified how the tick-borne Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus enters our cells. The results are an important step in the development of drugs against the deadly ...

New Testing Approach Improves Detection of Rare but Emerging Powassan Virus Spread by Deer Ticks

Mar. 26, 2024 — Researchers have come up with a new, more accurate method for detecting in ticks the emerging Powassan virus, which can cause life-threatening neuroinvasive disease, including encephalitis and ...

Experts Warn Climate Change Will Fuel Spread of Infectious Diseases

Mar. 20, 2024 — Infectious diseases specialists call the medical field to be ready to deal with the impact of climate change on spreading diseases, such as malaria, Valley fever, E. coli and Lyme ...

A Protein Found in Human Sweat May Protect Against Lyme Disease

Mar. 19, 2024 — Human sweat contains a protein that may protect against Lyme disease. About one-third of the population carries a genetic variant of this protein that is associated with Lyme disease in genome-wide ...

Doctors Have More Difficulty Diagnosing Disease When Looking at Images of Darker Skin

Feb. 6, 2024 — Doctors do not perform as well diagnosing skin diseases when the patient has darker skin, according to a new study. The researchers found assistance from artificial intelligence could improve ...

Ancient 'Chewing Gum' Reveals Stone Age Diet

Jan. 18, 2024 — What did people eat on the west coast of Scandinavia 10,000 years ago? A new study of the DNA in a chewing gum shows that deer, trout and hazelnuts were on the diet. It also shows that one of the ...

Many More Infected by TBE Virus Than Previously Known

Jan. 13, 2024 — The number of infections by the tick-borne TBE virus that are not detected by health services is far higher than previously assumed. This has been shown in a new study of Swedish blood ...

Allergic Responses to Common Foods Could Significantly Increase Risk of Heart Disease, Cardiovascular Death

Nov. 9, 2023 — Allergic responses to common foods such as dairy and peanuts can increase the risk for heart disease and cardiovascular death as much or more than smoking, new research suggests. And these dangerous ...

Infection With Common Cat-Borne Parasite Associated With Frailty in Older Adults

Nov. 7, 2023 — A new study of 601 older adults found that those with higher serointensity -- or a higher concentration of antibiodies -- to the cat-borne parasite Toxoplasma gondii are more likely to show signs of ...

New Antibiotic Approach Proves Promising Against Lyme Bacterium

Nov. 2, 2023 — Using a technique that has shown promise in targeting cancer tumors, a team has found a way to deploy a molecular warhead that can annihilate the bacterium that causes Lyme ...

New 'Subway Map' of Lyme Disease Pathways Identifies Potential New Treatment Targets

Oct. 19, 2023 — Scientists have developed a genome-scale metabolic model or 'subway map' of key metabolic activities of the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Using this map, they have successfully ...

Racing to Defuse a 'Ticking' Public Health Time Bomb

Oct. 18, 2023 — The explosive rise in tick-borne diseases in many parts of the United States over the last five decades represents a major public health threat that demands innovative solutions, warns a group of ...

Research Points to Potential New Medical Therapy for Lyme Disease

July 28, 2023 — A medical therapy that inhibits the growth of cancer cells may one day be effective at treating Lyme disease, according to new research ...

Bacterium Associated With Disease Found in NC Chiggers

July 12, 2023 — A bacterium that causes a disease called scrub typhus -- a disease not previously reported in the United States -- has been detected in North Carolina, according to a new ...

Warmer Weather Makes Venomous Snake Bites More Likely, Especially in Spring

July 11, 2023 — Climate change is not only making Georgia hotter but also increasing the likelihood of snake bite, according to a new study. Every degree Celsius of daily temperature increase corresponds with about ...

Maternal Dengue Fever: 'Compelling Evidence' That Even Mild Infections Impact Birth Outcomes

July 11, 2023 — Detrimental effects of all severities of maternal dengue infections on birth outcomes have been discovered in a new research ...