These diseases have symptoms that look like other conditions, so clinicians need to be suspicious. If there is no rash (in the case of Lyme disease), Dr. Naktin and the infectious diseases team use their experience to determine if blood tests are needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal is early detection and treatment in the year the patient is infected,\u201d Dr. Naktin says. \u201cThere are excellent tests that reveal presence of the organism in the blood, such as a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, which can detect anaplasmosis, babesiosis and a less common disease called ehrlichiosis.\u201d<\/p>\n
The blood test will show antibodies produced by the body\u2019s immune system. These can be missed if the test is taken too early when the antibody level is low. Therefore, if a patient\u2019s test is negative, but they have symptoms, the team may do another test in four to six weeks and treat in the meantime if their suspicion is high.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These tests are often done in conjunction with other blood tests that detect the body\u2019s immunological reaction to the infection.<\/p>\n
Initial treatment for all three tick-borne diseases is antibiotics. Doxycycline, frequently used for Lyme disease, is also effective against anaplasmosis and ehrlichiosis. Additional treatment may be necessary for babesiosis infection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"These diseases have symptoms that look like other conditions, so clinicians need to be suspicious. If there is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120],"class_list":["post-184356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}