Elevated Infections of Lyme Disease Patients with Cryptosporidium parvum

Omar M. Amin*, Nataliya Yu. Ru

Abstract

We report for the first time a relationship between clinical cases of Lyme disease diagnosed in a US patient population in a Virginia clinical facility and intestinal infections with Cryptosporidium parvum identified from fecal samples collected from the same patients tested in an Arizona Parasitology Center (PCI). Infections with C. parvum. in the populations of Lyme disease patients were at a considerably higher prevalence rate than in the general non-Lyme US population. Bartonella, Babesia, Ehrlichia, and Borrelia co-infections with the Lyme disease have been well established. All these infections are resident in the Ixodes tick vector system and can be transmitted to human via tick bite. Infections with C. parvum. , however, are transmitted by the water/food vehicle and not by tick bites and therefore do not lend themselves to the tick bite transmission pattern. This is the first such report involving a relationship between two pathologies with very different epidemiology. Our findings are more similar to the reported association between HIV-AIDS and Cryptosporidium infections as both conditions can often be associated with the fecal contamination via certain sexual practices. Our report addresses 456 cases studied for Lyme disease and C. parvum. infections by sex and age tested in the same facility.