Lyme disease is something rather nasty that you can get from being bittenby a tick. Both Lyme and ticks have had quite a good press of late (or perhaps a bad one) due to a number of “celebrities” getting infected –people such as John Caudwell (founder of Phones 4U) and Bella Hadid, daughter of Yolanda Foster – with long articles in the Mail, Evening Standard and on the BBC website.

Not so well promoted, but I hope important, was a short debate I secured and led on Lyme Disease and other tick-related infections in the House ofLords last week. This was, it seems, the first ever debate in Parliament onthis matter. This is perhaps not surprising since Lyme Disease was onlynamed in 1975 (after a small town in Connecticut where it was first studied). So what is this all about and should we all worry about it?

Lyme disease, or Lyme borreliosis, is an infectious disease transmitted tohumans and other animals by bites from ticks, which are small arthropodsrelated to spiders, and I can tell you from a close encounter with quite a big one last June that they are pretty nasty things. Infected ticks transmit the Borreliosis bacterium when they suck your blood, and they are found throughout the UK. They live on vegetation, particularly damp areas of vegetation such as bracken and in woodland. They are found throughout the countryside but they also appear more and more in towns – in parks and in suburban gardens for instance – and they are increasing in number.

Lyme disease can cause debilitating conditions, both acute and chronic. It can knock people out, producing symptoms similar to ME (for which it maybe misdiagnosed), migraines, neurological symptoms and persistent flu-likesymptoms – symptoms both physical and mental – so it is pretty serious stuff. At the moment, the only test for Lyme disease is a blood test, which is not wholly reliable since it produces many false negatives. The levels of knowledge about this disease within the NHS are inadequate and estimates of 3000 cases a year in the UK may be well on the low side.

Too little is known about this somewhat mysterious illness and there is controversy over its incidence, its diagnosis, its treatment and the relative success of different treatments. There is also confusion because there are other tick-related diseases which we appear to know even less about than Lyme disease, and which we might well be talking about in this way in a few years’ time.

The understanding and importance that the NHS gives to Lyme disease has improved in the past year or two, but information to professionals and public education are not as good as they ought to be. The Lyme DiseaseAssociation (LDA) is a small charity which provides advice and help for people with Lyme symptoms, and have put a lot of really good information in the public domain. They also campaign for better recognition of the problem within the NHS and among the general public. Its view is that “the current
level of knowledge is appalling. Doctors do not understand the tests, the epidemiology or the disease itself”.

We had a really good debate with contributions from both people with experience of the disease in their families and professionals. Liberal Democrat peer Kate Parminter spoke of the real need for a lot more information on what to do if you have a tick bite quoting her daughter who is doing the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. We got a serious reply from the health minister (Lord Prior of Brampton) and I hope we helped, in a “House of Lords” kind of way, to bring attention to what is a growing problem and put a bit of pressure on for more action from the authorities.

If you are walking in the countryside, or going out into a park in town or country, playing field sports, or just gardening – you need to know what ticks look like, what to do to check if you’ve been bitten, what to do if you find them on you or your kids, what to do if you are bitten. And you might catch one off your dog if you are not careful in how you remove them.

There’s lots of good information out there – you can’t start better than with the Lyme Disease Action website (and thanks to LDA for the pics of the horrid things!)

* Tony Greaves is a backbench Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords.