Hard Tick Relapsing Fever

i have not seen much on it in detail

there was one study i recall published in recent years i sent to another member here

the authors found one feature with differential diagnostic value for TBRF vs other tickborn infections - was extreme sleepiness -
from memory - by this they didnt mean staying in bed due to depression - they were talking about people who wanted to do stuff but just could not stay awake during the day - often sleeping 16hrs out of every 24 and being able to avoid it

the TBRF borrelia group are quite separate to the borrelia burgdorferi group (which includes all the European strains and Asian strains etc that cause lyme disease )
some of the TBRF group - like Borrelia hermsii is transmitted by different ticks - ie soft bodied ticks - where as other like Miyamotoi are transmitted by the same ticks as lyme disease causing borrelia


in fact - if you look at the current Wikipedia page for known borrelia species there are, by some classifications, around 10 species of TBRF - and then around double that of Lyme disease causing bacteria
https://tinyurl.com/2asdtxmz

then there are currently another 30 or so candidate species that are currently not placed in either main group

as far as i can work out the symptoms of TBRF are, like Lyme disease rather variable, and have quite a bit of overlap - especially once chronic - and its known that some people with TBRF never experience fevers at all - so in any one person it could look exactly like lyme disease.

the paper i mentioned earlier was therefore notable as it was picking out that symptom of excessive sleepiness as one that popped up quite often in the TBRF group and so could potentially be useful to tell them apart - it was not in all of the people with TBRF - and i don't recall the exact figures so don't quote me - but as an example maybe it was in something like 30% of people with TBRF group - but only a few % of the lyme and other diseases group
so definitely not a 1 to 1 relationship - but occurring more often in TBRF

i seem to recall the official figures for the USA geographic distribution for TBRF is narrower than other forms of lyme
but that may vary by species - some overlap with Lyme geographically and inhabit the same ticks

For what it may be worth, I tested positive (on basic LabCorp tests) for Borrelia hermsii before I tested positive for anything else, but I never had fevers. I had major fatigue but oddly not sleepiness; I would need to be in bed all day, but kept a normal eight-hour nighttime sleep schedule and never napped. I suspect we all end up with a soup of infections that work symbiotically to cause dysfunction in the chronic stages, so it's not particularly strange to me that I had some infections without any of their standard symptoms.

saraeli said...
For what it may be worth, I tested positive (on basic LabCorp tests) for Borrelia hermsii before I tested positive for anything else, but I never had fevers. I had major fatigue but oddly not sleepiness; I would need to be in bed all day, but kept a normal eight-hour nighttime sleep schedule and never napped. I suspect we all end up with a soup of infections that work symbiotically to cause dysfunction in the chronic stages, so it's not particularly strange to me that I had some infections without any of their standard symptoms.

Did you have a std. Western Blot done for Bb? If so, what Bands came back positive?
Just curious......

Thanks,
Rob