Under Our Skin 2: Emergence, reveals the problems with the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme patients, but hope is on the horizon.
An estimated 300,000 Americans are diagnosed with Lyme disease annually and these numbers are rising across the globe.
The CDC started national surveillance of Lyme in 1982. Since then, the annual number of Lyme disease cases that are reported, has increased nearly 25-fold.
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By 2012, the number of Lyme "hotspots" had risen to 182.
Even today, many Lyme patients are misdiagnosed and can face resistance getting their insurance companies to pay for proper treatment.
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Under Our Skin 2: Emergence is a sequel to the award-winning and Academy Award semifinalist documentary "Under Our Skin", which exposed the hidden story of "medical and scientific malfeasance and neglect," as thousands of people with Lyme disease go undiagnosed, or get misdiagnosed each year.
The History of Lyme Disease:
Lyme disease was from the town of Lyme, Connecticut, where the disease was first identified in1975.
By 1977, the black-legged tick (Ixodes scapularis, also known as the deer tick) was linked to transmission of the disease.
In 1982, Willy Burgdorfer, Ph.D., discovered the bacterium responsible for the infection: Borrelia burgdorferi (B. burgdorferi), a relative to the spirochete bacterium that causes syphilis. The bacteria are released into your blood from the infected tick.
We now know there are five subspecies of B. burgdorferi with more than 100 strains in the U.S. and some 300 strains worldwide, many of which have developed resistance to antibiotics.
Part of what makes B. burgdorferi such a problem is that the symptoms can manifest in so many different ways in different patients. This often makes the proper diagnosis challenging.
B. burgdorferi is corkscrew-shaped and can burrow into and hide in a variety of your body's tissues.
To learn more about the symptoms and the prevention of Lyme disease, make sure to check out the award-winning films Under Our Skin and Under Our Skin 2: Emergence.