In recent years, Lyme disease has been identified in a wide band across Europe. If Congress approves the bill this month, it would receive funding next October. The tiny deer tick no bigger than a poppy seed carries a bacterial spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi. Humans get the disease when a tick, often undetected, bites them and injects bacteria into the bloodstream. The first symptoms of the disease resemble the flu a fever, backache and headache only without any stomach upset or respiratory infection.
Some people also develop a large, red rash around the tick bite.
If people begin antibiotic treatment of the disease at this stage, they usually recover without complications. Dr. Carmine Sorbera, director of cardiac electrophysiology at New York Medical College in Valhalla, N.Y., said at the conference last weekend that researchers are finding the Lyme spirochete may interfere with the heart's ability to pump blood strongly throughout the entire circulatory system. That, in turn, causes dizziness and fatigue. It's not hocus-pocus anymore,'' he said. It's also possible the spirochete may be able to survive in the bloodstream for several months or years before reproducing and causing what some doctors call chronic Lyme disease.