Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:27:48 -0500
From: John Dykers, MD
Subject: tick bourn diseases
fortunately the 3 main tick bourn diseases, Rocky Mt Spotted Fever, Erhlichosis, and Lyme disease are all susucptible to doxycycline in the early stages, usuallly 100 mg twice a day for 10 days. My premise is that I should rarely make the diagnosis of any of these because I accept the risk of overtreating tick bites, not all tick bites, but I have a high index of suspicion, especially if I think a tick may have been imbedded for near 24 hours.
This derives with me from the death of Jim Tatum. He was the football coach at UNC briefly. He had been hired after much success at Maryland and was the Butch Davis of his era. He got sick and was hospitalized at UNC and the purists couldn’t diagnose his fever untill his RMSF was so advanced that it killed him. $2.50 worth of tetracycline (an earlier form similar to doxycycline) given early and he would have been well in 24 hours. I think that is an easy tradeoff.
John Dykers, Jr. M. D.