How to Diagnose Tick-Borne Diseases

Ticks can cause several infections, and the specific diagnosis for any of them can be difficult because a patient can be infected by more than one disease from the same tick bite. The symptoms of tick-borne diseases also can be quite similar, further compounding the problem. The following steps will show how to diagnose the more common tick-borne diseases.

Instructions

• 1

  Realize that tick-borne diseases are usually diagnosed clinically because specific laboratory tests are generally not available. Even when they are, treatment is normally begun without specific tests because of the seriousness of many of these diseases.

• 2

  Detect the antibodies for Borrelia burgdorferi, which causes Lyme Disease. These antibodies are usually detectable within 6 days of infection with an enzyme-linked immunoabsorbent assay test. This test is prone to false positives; it should be confirmed with a Western immunoblot.

• 3

  Diagnose Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever based on the clinical evaluation and patient history and begin treatment before laboratory confirmation. The diagnosis can be confirmed later with an indirect hemagglutination assay (IHA), immunofluorescence assay (IFA) and latex agglutination.

• 4

  Recognize babesiois in patients with anemia, decreased hemoglobin and hemoglobinuria. Most patients also have thrombocytopenia, and Giemsa- or Wright-stained blood smears may show Babesia. An IFA can confirm the diagnosis because most acutely ill patients have an antibody titer ratio greater than 1:1024.

• 5

  Identify ehrlichiosis clinically. The diagnosis can be confirmed by a four-fold rise in the antibody level between the acute and convalescent stage.