Black-white differences in the clinical manifestations and timing of initial Lyme disease diagnoses

Excerpt

Black patients are less represented in medical textbooks [1]. This underrepresentation may make it more difficult for physicians to recognize the dermatologic manifestations of certain diseases in black patients [2]. For Lyme disease, this may lead to a delay in diagnosis, which may result in black patients presenting more often with disseminated disease when initially diagnosed. Black patients also may present to physicians later than white patients do. Prior research using 1990s single-state data found that black patients with Lyme disease were more likely to present with disseminated disease [3]. More recent national estimates of racial differences in the distribution of clinical manifestations of Lyme disease are unknown. …