Nearly one in three people who tested positive for antibodies to the bacterium that causes Lyme disease also had antibodies to at least one other tick-borne pathogen, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. Researchers from Quest Diagnostics and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found the overlap in 29.5% of Lyme-positive patients, compared with 5.5% of people without Lyme antibodies.
The finding matters now because tick season is not over. Nearly 26% of the testing in the study occurred in September through November, and the most common co-exposures involved Babesia and Anaplasma, which are spread by the same blacklegged ticks that carry Lyme disease.
