In 2022, there was an increase in the number of reported Lyme disease cases following the implementation of a revised surveillance case definition.

In 2022, there was an increase in the number of reported Lyme disease cases following the implementation of a revised surveillance case definition, according to research published in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Noting that after the implementation of a revised surveillance case definition in 2022, high-incidence jurisdictions could report Lyme disease cases based on laboratory evidence alone without additional clinical information, Kiersten J. Kugeler, PhD, and colleagues summarized the first year of Lyme disease surveillance data collected using the 2022 case definition and compared these data with cases reported between 2017 and 2019. The researchers found that 62,551 Lyme disease cases were reported to the CDC in 2022, which was 1.7 times the annual average of 37,118 cases reported from 2017 to 2019. Older age groups had the highest increase in annual incidence, with incidence approximately doubling for adults 65 years and older compared with 2017 to 2019.