How Many People in the United States have Lyme Disease?

Population studies of people with Lyme disease in the United States

Most people do not achieve answers as to why they are ill, why they are having intermittent chronic symptoms and why they can’t seem to get better. People find themselves searching for answers in the internet and commonly ask, “how many people in the United States have Lyme disease?”

CDC Study

Lyme disease and Lyme disease related infections are the largest epidemics in US history. In 2012, the CDC did a study estimating .3% of the US population had Lyme disease, bringing a positive diagnosis to approximately one million people.

Neither study included the 20+ million people with chronic fatigue syndrome, 5 million people with fibromyalgia, and 1 million people with multiple sclerosis; all three, which are major overlaps for Lyme disease. This does not include 4% of the population in New England who tested positive for the Lyme disease related infection Borrelia Miyamotoi, which is a more severe Lyme disease related infection than the Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia Bougdorferi. This does not include the likely misdiagnoses of many of the 50 million people in the USA alone with autoimmune challenges such as Gulf War Syndrome, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, ALS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Sjogren’s, polychondritis, Crohn’s disease and more. This is not to say all these people with these diagnoses have Lyme related infections, but according to research and infectious disease experts, many times the causative factors and sustainers of these diseases are Lyme related infections. That said, millions of people have Lyme and or Lyme related disease and millions more are misdiagnosed and undiagnosed.

NIH HEALTH CARE COSTS

The National Institute of Health estimates annual health care costs for autoimmune disease to be approximately of 100 billion dollars, 57 billion dollars for cancer treatments and 200 billion for cardiovascular treatments and interventions.

Whether or not the immune system responding to pathogens associated with Lyme disease are a cause of one’s intermittent chronic symptoms, pathogenic influence more times that not is. That said, many times, in order to gradually reverse these intermittent chronic nagging symptoms, we need to get these unwanted microbes under control. Being that is takes time for pathogens to proliferate in the body until they finally cause chronic immune reactions, it takes time to get out of the swamp of chronic symptoms. Dr. Patrick Lynch or Trillium Health Solutions knows how to help people help themselves get their health back.

1. Sharareh N, Behler RP, Roome AB, Shepherd J, Garruto RM, Sabounchi NS. Risk Factors of Lyme Disease: An Intersection of Environmental Ecology and Systems Science. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland). 2019;7(2). doi:10.3390/healthcare7020066.

2. Autoimmune disease statistics • aarda. (n.d.). Retrieved March 06, 2021, from https://www.aarda.org/news-information/statistics/#1488234386508- a9560084-9b69