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In the early 1970s, a mysterious clustering of arthritis occurred among children in Lyme, Connecticut, and surrounding towns. Medical researchers soon recognized the illness as a distinct disease, which they called . They subsequently described the clinical featur ....

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.... lived near wooded areas likely to harbor ticks. They also found that the children's first symptoms typically started in the summer months coinciding with the height of the tick season. Several of the patients interviewed reported having a skin rash just before developing their arthritis, and many also recalled being bitten by a tick at the rash site. Further investigations resulted in the discovery that tiny deer ticks infected with a spiral-shaped bacterium or spirochete (which was later named Borrelia burgdorferi) were responsible for the outbreak of arthritis in Lyme. In Europe, a skin rash similar to that of had been described in medical lit ....