Treatment of Lyme disease

Lyme disease, a tick-transmitted spirochetal infection, can be divided into three stages that can overlap or occur alone. The goals of antibiotic therapy in stage one are to shorten the duration of early disease and to prevent the development of later stages of the illness. This can usually be accomplished with oral antibiotic therapy. Later stages of the illness are frequently more difficult to treat, requiring prolonged oral or intravenous antibiotic therapy.