It’s Lyme Disease Awareness day 14, and today I’m talking about Lyme Disease co-infections

When you are bitten by an insect that carries the lyme disease bacteria, there is a good possibility that that insect is also carrying other diseases. These are called co-infections

➡ These infections are not all bacterial- some are viral and parasitical, meaning that antibiotics will not kill them.

➡ If antibiotics failed to treat your lyme disease, it could be because you have a co-infection💚

➡ Co-infections of Lyme include:

▫ Babesia ▫ Bartonella ▫ Mycoplasma ▫ Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever ▫ Anaplasma ▫ Rickettsia ▫ Ehrlichia

If you have Lyme, there’s a good chance you are carrying other tick-transmitted diseases. More advanced Lyme tests will be able to test for co-infections.

It is EXTREMELY important to know if you have had these co-infections because they can affect you for the rest of your life.

I had the Lyme co-infection babesia, which is a malarial-like parasitical infection

If you are ever diagnosed with babesia, you are banned from donating blood for the rest of your life. Even though I no longer experience symptoms, I can never donate blood because of this previous diagnosis.

Babesia is not really something blood donations check for, and some people have gotten infected with it from donated blood. There is also a chance that babesia can be transmitted through an infected organ, so please consider this when you opt to be a blood or organ donor if you have ever had Lyme+co

💚 LYME PATIENTS: What co-infections do you have? 💚