IMUGEN.

The presence of B. miyamotoi DNA in the peripheral blood and the patients' eventual therapeutic response to doxycycline are consistent with the hypothesis that their illness was due to this newly recognized spirochete. Samples from tick-exposed patients acutely presenting with signs of HGA but who have a delayed response to doxycycline therapy or negative confirmatory test results for HGA should be analyzed carefully for evidence of B. miyamotoi infection.

Synopsis Borrelia miyamotoi disease (BMD) is a newly recognized borreliosis globally transmitted by ticks of the Ixodes persulcatus species complex. Once considered to be a tick symbiont with no public health implications, B. miyamotoi is increasingly being recognized as the agent of a nonspecific febrile illness often misdiagnosed as acute Lyme disease without rash, or as ehrlichiosis. The frequency of its diagnosis in the northeastern U.S. is similar to that of HGA. A diagnosis of BMD may be confirmed by PCR analysis of acute blood samples, or by seroconversion using a recombinant GlpQ enzyme immunoassay. As with Lyme disease or HGA, BMD is successfully treated with oral doxycycline or amoxicillin.