Beebe hosts Lyme Aware Delaware Conference

Beebe Healthcare and Delaware’s Lyme Disease Education Oversight Board hosted the Lyme Aware Delaware Conference May 17 at Lewes Public Library.

Delaware has averaged the eighth-highest incidence of Lyme disease in the U.S. since 2018, according to the LDEOB. The conference was held to educate medical providers on current research on tick-borne diseases in Delaware, and how to diagnose and treat these illnesses in patients. 

“It’s a misdiagnosis much of the time,” said Rebecca Benson, a practitioner from Beebe. “Therefore, people are not getting diagnosed accurately, and they wind up with long-term effects, crippling effects, including arthritis, dementia, neuropsychiatric symptoms.”

The conference opened with remarks from LDEOB members and a welcome from Beebe CEO and President Dr. David Tam. Rep. Pete Schwartzkopf, D-Rehoboth Beach, followed up with a talk about Delaware’s Lyme law history. 

Elizabeth Maloney, a physician and former member of the Tick-Borne Disease Working Group, explained that reaching accurate results when testing for Lyme disease is difficult. Not only are false positives and false negatives common, but she also doesn’t want to incorrectly label illnesses as Lyme disease when it is another illness. 

“When I speak to the public, I always say the goal is not to be diagnosed with Lyme disease; it’s to be diagnosed correctly,” she said.

Delaware Insurance Commissioner Trinidad Navarro saw his daughter, Hannah, diagnosed with a false negative for Lyme disease in 2015. After further testing years later, professionals found that Hannah had chronic Lyme disease. Now, Navarro is attempting to require coverage for Lyme disease testing, stay updated on new medical literature related to Lyme, and make healthcare access both more accessible and affordable.  

“When detecting it accurately and treating it expeditiously, most patients can avoid long-term health impacts,” Navarro said.

Brian Fallon, director of the Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center, explores Lyme’s impact on neurology. He said the disease can cause depression, sleep disturbances and extreme irritability. Fallon reported that most mental health disorders are not caused by Lyme disease, but some are. 

“Up to 90% of people have cognitive symptoms or complaints that meet the criteria for post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome,” Fallon said.

Fallon also found that one in five individuals who came to his practice for evaluation reported suicidal thoughts. For those with moderate depression, two-thirds of the patients had suicidal thoughts. 

He said that both underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis can lead to increasing anxiety, hopelessness and treatment delays. 

Microbiologist Michael Buoni from Delaware Technical Community College explained that a high percentage of black-legged ticks – the organism that carries Lyme disease – were infected with pathogens. 

“At our college, our students are collecting ticks and using the test that I designed to test the actual ticks for what particular infectious agents they have,” Buoni said. 

Ashley Kennedy of LDEOB and the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control’s Division of Fish and Wildlife described the Delaware Tick Program, which began in 2019. Through the program, professionals have learned about the kinds of ticks in Delaware, their most active seasons, their distribution patterns throughout the state and the wildlife to which they are most attracted. 

Kennedy said there are 19 different tick species in Delaware, but the five that pose the greatest threat to human health are the black-legged, lone star, American dog, Gulf Coast and longhorn ticks. Using de.gov/ticks is the best way to understand the tick bite and its consequential treatment, Kennedy said. 

“We have a tick interaction report form where users can upload a photo of a tick that they found, whether it’s biting them or if they found it on a child or a pet or just loose in their yard,” Kennedy said. “We can provide a timely identification that will help them to evaluate their risk and decide on their next steps to take.”

To prevent tick bites, Kennedy advises using repellants and performing checks after being outdoors. She said it’s critical to remove ticks as soon as possible because there is a higher likelihood of pathogen infection the longer the tick is attached to the skin. 

Prime tick season is late spring and early summer, so it is especially important to stay informed and protected from ticks this time of year.