Risk of Lyme disease: perceptions of residents of a Lone Star tick-infested community.

Abstract

The residents of Gibson Island had an exaggerated perception of the risk of Lyme disease because they were intensely infested with an aggressively human-biting and irritating nonvector tick. In addition, a Lyme disease mimic of undescribed etiology (named Masters' disease) seems to be associated with Lone Star ticks, and may confound Lyme disease surveillance. The epidemiological and entomological approach used in this study might fruitfully be applied wherever newly emergent tickborne zoonoses have been discovered.