Rotary Plans Lyme Disease Forum

The Newtown Rotary Club, in conjunction with the Newtown Lyme Disease Task Force, is presenting a program on Lyme disease prevention and identification on Monday, April 9, from 7 to 9 pm at the Fireside Inn. Admission is free and open to the public.

There will be free testing for Lyme Disease for persons aged 18 to 60 from 5 to 7 pm.  Call 212/543-6510 for an appointment. Walk-ins also will be accepted.

Speakers at the forum will include Dr Brian A. Fallon, associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. He will address behavioral and cognitive manifestations of Lyme Disease, including the effects on children and adolescents.

Karen Vanderhoof-Forschner, president and founder of the Lyme Disease Foundation and author of the book Everything You Need to Know About Lyme Disease, will provide an overview of the foundation, the politics of Lyme Disease, and information on educational programs for schools.

There will be an introduction by the Newtown Lyme Disease Task Force.

The objective of the forum is for the general public to become aware of the disease, how to reduce the risk of contracting it, and how to identify it. Last July a similar forum was held in Newtown. Later it was learned that a child who visited his grandparents in Connecticut was diagnosed by his doctor in Texas as having Lyme disease. The diagnosis came only after literature from the July forum was faxed to the child’s doctor.

Lyme disease soared in the late 1990s as Americans built more and more homes in the woods, bringing people into contact with ticks, according to new figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC said it recorded nearly 17,000 cases of Lyme in 1998 and more than 16,000 in 1999, with the vast majority concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest.

The United States averaged about 11,000 cases a year in the first eight years of the decade.

The CDC said increased awareness of Lyme disease may account for some of the rise.

But the agency attributed the jump mainly to cities sprawling into rural areas, new homes being built in heavily wooded developments, and a booming population of deer, which carry ticks that spread the disease.

“People are simply having more contact with the ticks that can transmit Lyme disease, even in their own backyards,” CDC epidemiologist Stacie Marshall said. “People really enjoy having that sort of forested, outdoorsy ecology right around. There’s just more chance to have more contact.”

Lyme disease causes fatigue, fever, and joint pain that can persist for weeks, and some patients develop severe arthritis. Lyme also can badly damage the heart and nervous system if it goes untreated by antibiotics.

Signs include rash and flu-like symptoms. Daily tick checks, vaccinations, and insect repellent are recommended as preventive measures.

More than 90 percent of the 1999 cases came from nine states – Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin – where deer ticks are most common.

Massachusetts had 12.7 cases per 100,000 population, which ranked it eighth in the nation.

Connecticut accounted for one in every six reported cases in 1999. It was in Lyme, Conn., that the disease was discovered in 1975.

Lyme was first tracked nationally only 10 years ago. More information on the CDC study is available on the CDC Lyme disease Web page at www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/lymeinfo.htm.

Associated Press reports were incorporated into this article.