As America once again enters the “Lyme disease season” information regarding this major infectious disease continues to evolve rapidly. The following material has been generated using GIDEON, an interactive on line program that can be used to diagnose or explore the status of all infectious diseases: signs and symptoms, status in every country, ongoing epidemics, antibiotics, vaccines, parasites, virus … in real time. So, let’s test your knowledge about Lyme disease:

1. True or false: Lyme disease is a relatively new infection that is primarily limited to the United States.
2. You have probably heard that Lyme disease is transmitted by ticks. How many tick-borne diseases occur in the world ? In the United States ?
3. Many other infectious diseases are characterized by severe illness, involving many body systems. Are there any truly unique features to Lyme disease ?
4. How many antibiotic agents are available ? How many are effective against the bacterium that causes Lyme disease ?

I put these four questions to GIDEON … (more…)

Diagnosing a patient has just become easier with our latest feature, symptom images. As you mouse over any of the symptoms in the Diagnosis module, the signs and symptom description will display a representative photo or image. This will provide an additional visual differentiation of similar symptoms, further enhancing GIDEON diagnosis. See the example of the description of Jaundice to the left.

Epidemiological information of the infectious diseases in GIDEON have been enhanced by the Images tab. This tab includes photos and images related to the diseases in GIDEON. See Images description for more information.