Lyme Disease in Spiders, Mosquitoes and Other Insects

Richard Horowitz, MD

Richard Horowitz, MD, medical director of the Hudson Valley Healing Arts Center, in Hyde Park, New York. He has treated more than 13,000 chronic Lyme disease patients over the last 31 years. He is a member of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Tick-Borne Disease Working Group, cochair of the HHS Other Tick-Borne Diseases and Co-Infections Subcommittee and the author of How Can I Get Better? An Action Plan for Treating Resistant Lyme & Chronic Disease. The views expressed here are those of Dr. Richard Horowitz, and do not represent the views of the Tick-Borne Disease Working Group, the US Department of Health and Human Services or the United States.

*Bottom Line/HEALTH:*		Can I get Lyme disease from other bug bites, such as spiders or mosquitoes?
Dr. Richard Horowitz:		It’s not known if you can get it from a mosquito, but Willie Burgdorfer, who is the initial discoverer of Lyme disease, did find spirochetes in mosquitoes. We just don’t know that it can be transmitted. They found it in horse flies…they’ve found it in other things…but we just don’t know the transmission rate. What we do know is in the blood supply—you can get tick-borne infections from a blood transfusion. The Red Cross is very concerned, because you can get Babesia anaplasma, and mothers can pass this to their children. I’ve spoken to the OB/Gyns about how important it is that women fill out this multisystemic questionnaire that I have, the MSIDS questionnaire. If a woman is thinking about getting pregnant, if you have multisystemic symptoms, I’ve seen women pass this on to their child. You have to be very careful with the offspring because the babies can be very sick.
*Bottom Line:*		In fact, in your book, you talked about working very hard with a woman to get pregnant and really treating her for quite a while before she was successfully able to do so.
Dr. Horowitz:		Correct.

Lyme Disease in Spiders, Mosquitoes and Other Insects

Richard Horowitz, MD

Sign up to be a Bottom Line Insider today!