Lyme borreliosis (LB), commonly referred to as Lyme disease (LD), is a prominent global health issue, exhibiting a seroprevalence rate of 14.5%. Heightened incidence levels of LD have been recorded in parts of Europe, Poland, Eastern Europe, and the Baltic States. The research aimed to inform the cost of LD and post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS) in Ireland through results from a patient questionnaire, disease modelling, the construction of a patient roadmap, and attempts to arrive at prevalence calculation estimates based on local data. Patient data encompassed sociodemographic particulars, disease attributes, healthcare resource utilization, and the influence on their employment status. Of 301 patients, 210 were diagnosed with LD and/or a tick-borne infection (TBI), the cohort’s average age was 40.07 (SD 13.5) ( N = 210; Female:Male 60:40). The mean duration of symptoms in PTLDS patients was 7.15 years. The average number of visits to other healthcare professionals was 16.8 per patient. Regarding current employment status, the data indicates that 50.2% of respondents were currently working, 10.1% were unemployed, 8.7% were retired, 5.3% had caring responsibilities, 11.1% were on sick leave, and 14.5% fell into the “Other” category. Additionally, when asked if symptoms had affected their employment status, 69% of respondents said yes, 26% said no, and 5% did not respond. Modeling efforts show that the roadmap to care for PTLDS is challenging, leading to wandering from specialty to specialty and high healthcare utilization. Utilizing a novel method of indirect reverse estimation, our lifetime risk or cumulative incidence of PTLDS estimation is at 0.003%. Lack of data collection from Irish health authorities is leaving the issue of the cost of LD and PTLDS hard to address, despite efforts from our single-site study.
Avramovic et al. (Wed,) studied this question.