High School Students Want to Know: How many people get Lyme disease every year?

 Question #5:

How many people get Lyme disease every year?

Because we do not yet have a particularly reliable way to diagnose and test for Lyme disease causing bacteria in people, there is some discrepancy in the exact number of people who get Lyme disease each year.  Usually our statistics on the number of cases is reliant upon doctors reporting this information to state or federal sources tracking reportable diseases.  Another way that can be used to estimate the number of cases is by insurance claims where Lyme disease is listed as the reason for the visit/treatment that the insurance payment is requested to cover.  The number of cases can vary from year to year, so some data reports annual estimates, where other reports will list estimates for a given year.

According to the Center for Disease control website:

Each year, approximately 30,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported to CDC by state health departments and the District of Columbia. However, this number does not reflect every case of Lyme disease that is diagnosed in the United States every year. Standard national surveillance is only one way that public health officials can track where a disease is occurring and with what frequency. Recent estimates using other methods suggest that approximately 476,000 people may get Lyme disease each year in the United States.

The Minnesota Department of Health’s most recent data for 2018 states there were 950 confirmed cases in Minnesota.

Post by C. Fisher