Cognitive impairments from lyme borreliosis/tick-borne disease

Cognitive Impairments from Lyme Borreliosis and other tick-borne diseases are caused be three basic mechanisms—infection in the body which provokes the immune system resulting in brain inflammation, vascular pathology, and infection in the parenchyma of the brain. Infection in the body resulting in immune provocation of the brain is the most common mechanism. The resulting cognitive symptoms include decreased attention span, distractibility, reduced allocation of attention, hypersensitivity to sound, reduced working memory, reduced short-term memory, reduced working spatial memory, reduced remote memory, word finding problems, decreased name recall, decreased number recall, decreased geographical memory, decreased recall of faces, reduced fluency of speech, decreased reading comprehension, spelling errors, word substitution errors, calculation impairments, decreased auditory comprehension, decreased handwriting, letter reversals, decreased fluency of written language, number reversals, left-right confusion, decreased capacity for transposition of laterality, spatial perceptual distortions, brain fog, unfocused concentration, decreased capacity to prioritize tasks, decreased multitasking, decreased abstract reasoning, and time management impairments. Initial infection starts a gradually increasing and expanding symptoms. Patients with chronic infection in the body resulting in chronic brain inflammation progress more slowly, while patient with vascular involvement decline in a more erratic manner and patients with infection within the central nervous system have a rapidly progressive dementia. Treatment includes antimicrobials, immune modulators and psychotropics with cognitive benefits.

PDF HTML