About 30,000 people are diagnosed with Lyme disease every year, but the number of actual cases could be about 10 times higher than what is reported to doctors.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been working to determine the correct number of U.S. Lyme disease cases each year, a CDC press release reported.
The effort is divided among three CDC studies, one analyzes medical claims, one looks at data from clinical laboratories, and the last analyzes self-reported Lyme disease cases.
The studies concluded the actual number of people that contract Lyme is about 10 times higher than what is reported.
"We know that routine surveillance only gives us part of the picture, and that the true number of illnesses is much greater," Paul Mead, M.D., M.P.H, chief of epidemiology and surveillance for CDC's Lyme disease program, said. "This new preliminary estimate confirms that Lyme disease is a tremendous public health problem in the United States, and clearly highlights the urgent need for prevention."
The CDC will continue to study the disease in order to come up with the most accurate numbers.
"We know people can prevent tick bites through steps like using repellents and tick checks. Although these measures are effective, they aren't fail-proof and people don't always use them," Lyle R. Petersen, M.D., M.P.H, director of CDC's Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, said. "We need to move to a broader approach to tick reduction, involving entire communities, to combat this public health problem."
The approach will ask communities to keep the tick problem under control as much as possible by killing the insects on personal property and taking deer-human interactions into account.
About 96 percent of cases in 13 states are transmitted from tick to human.
Symptoms of Lyme typically include: "fever, headache, fatigue, and a characteristic skin rash called erythema migrans."
