GCA-Lyme Disease Connection?

[montebello]

Hi all,

My wife is a long-time Lyme Disease sufferer, and has recently had a consultation with a biologist/pathologist. This person takes a blood sample and then looks at it under the microscope while the patient is present -- and then comments on what has been seen.

My wife had the classic signs of a continuing Lyme infection -- we could actually see the spirochetes squirming around in her blood. The blood also showed classic signs of inflammation, in part due to the Lyme bacteria that were present.

When this pathologist learned that I have GCA, she suggested that I also have my blood checked, because "Lyme is a classic trigger for GCA."

Has anyone heard of this before, i.e., that Lyme is a classic trigger of GCA?

Thanks so much

[SnazzyD]

Any infection can trigger autoimmune response but it is interesting that GCA and Lyme are not strangers to each other. Just two things I found and their bibliographies show this too.

More about Lyme mimicking GCA/PMR and Pred being good for one but bad for the other so Lyme testing should be used in diagnosis.

the-rheumatologist.org/arti....

This one about a man who lost his sight and a biopsy was positive but steroids didn’t save his sight. Found to have Borrelia and sight restored to some extent with antibiotics.

[montebello in reply to SnazzyD]

Thank you, SnazzyD.

[PMRpro Ambassador]

Not sure I'd class it as a CLASSICAL trigger of GCA - I got the same link as Snazzy. But I also got this

researchgate.net/publicatio...

and both PMR and GCA have symptoms that overlap with other conditions - GCA symptoms can be mimicked by ankylosing spondylitis interfering with the blood flow through the neck arteries to the brain. Lyme is going to cause inflammation, it is going to really kick the immune system - and so is as likely to trigger PMR or GCA as any other illness.

Correlation and causation are different things and if antibiotics "cured" the symptoms - it is unlikely they were due to GCA . But the symptoms of PMR and Lyme do overlap a lot. If there is a likelihood you could have Lyme's it is a rule-out in the differential diagnosis.

[montebello in reply to PMRpro]

Thank you. I have personally been tested for Lyme several times over the last 10 years... all negative. My question was more generic in that I wondered whether this could be a trigger for others.

Thanks again

[PMRpro Ambassador in reply to montebello]

ANY illness can be the final trigger - you really can't rule out any infection as a potential trigger.