Lyme Plus: Coinfection Symptoms

Today we are going to look at combination packs and their symptoms: when you have lyme plus one or more coinfections, what do your symptoms look like? Harking back to my blog from July 19, here's a reminder of the top 15 symptoms for everyone in our survey.

I surveyed about 48 symptoms. People reported having an average of 31 symptoms. Thus, another of our lyme profiles that medical practitioners can be on the look out for is: "there's a heck of a lot going on with this patient."

And of course most of us don't "simply" have lyme. I thought it might be interesting for folks to see these cross-referenced results. Here are the chart of the top 15 symptoms for the co-infections I surveyed about.

 Each co-infection "flavors" the presentation of lyme symptoms in a different way. If you feel like your own profile fits one of these really strongly, it might be worth printing out the little chart and taking it to your doctor when you ask to be tested or evaluated for one of these; however, recognize that this ia a surface treatment of these coinfection, and that most symptoms I surveyed about can show up with just plain old lyme.

A most thorough treatment of co-infections symptoms can be found on the Living Lyme website. If you go to this page, scroll down the right hand side until you see the "Lyme and Co Symptoms Checklist". This well organized chart is invaluable for figuring out just what you--or your patients--might have going on. Thanks to Marsha Marcinko for her fine work putting together the Living Lyme website.

Using the resource list on Livining Lyme can tell you about symptoms that are distinct to one coinfection (such as air hunger being strongly associated with babesia). What my charts can give you a sense of is prominence of symptoms when that coinfection is combined with lyme. Use them togather to get a stronger clinical profile for each illness.


Babesia emphasizes brain fog and lack of concentration and motivation. (Based on responses from 192 patients.)

 

Bartonella bring insomnia and emotional oversensitivity into the top 15. (Based on responses from 212 patients.)

Mycoplasma brings emotional sensitivity and sharp pains into the top 15. (Based on responses from 80 patients.)

The word "malaise" comes to mind when you look at erlichiosis plus lyme: 100% of people with both lack energy, and exhaustion and lack of concentration are close on its heals. It also brings light sensitivity into the top 15 symptoms. (Based on responses from 71 patients.)

Of the results thus far, anaplasmosis strikes me as having the most distinctive pattern. 94.4% of people report difficulty standing or walking, and sound and emotional sensitivity also make the top 15. More interesting, 100% report a whole host of symptoms-- it is like this one is the great enhancer bug.

Really, solidly, horribly bad lyme? Check to see if this little darlin' is making it all worse. (Based on responses from 18 patients.)

In fact, look at the whole symptoms results chart when you add anaplasmosis in. I know this is really hard to read, but the point is, everything is reported a higher percentage of the time. It makes me wonder if the folks among us who are the most sick and seem to have every symptom possible might just have this puppy complicating their situation...

As a concrete comparison, remember that all patients reported 31 symptoms on average. Babesia plus lyme patients reported 34 on average (and any coinfection will up this number); anaplasmosis patients have an average of 39 symptoms. The lowest % for any symptom on both the general survey count and anaplasmosis was seizures. However, while 1/5 of all patients have them, 1/3 of patients with lyme plus anaplasmosis have them.


With rocky mountain spotted fever, we finally see rashes make the top 15 list. It also looks like it hurts more often than plain lyme: 100% report joint pain and 92.3% sharp pains. Light sensitivity also makes this list. A note on the RMSF rashes from later in the survey: 66% of folks with RMSF didn't get any rash when they were first infected, so presumably most of this rash activity has happened later on. (Based on responses from 26 patients.)

Note: with only 2 people in our survey reporting having Colorado tick fever, 5 people reporting tick borne encephilitis and 3 reporting tularemia, I judged them to not be large enough sample sizes to mean anything; I feel like I was already pushing it with a couple of the others, so I'm leaving these out.

Some day, we'll do the version of this survey that 2,000 people respond to. Then we'll really have a lot of charts to play with!