Ticks are spreading anaplasmosis, not just Lyme disease, CMA warns

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Journal urges doctors to consider anaplasmosis as a possible diagnosis for patients with unexplained fever as tick-borne illnesses rise in eastern Canada. Senior author Dr. Michael Quon, an internal medicine specialist at The Ottawa Hospital, and his colleagues described the case of a 79-year-old man who had a fever, chills and generalized weakness that caused him to fall last summer. Although the patient didn’t remember having a tick bite, he lived in a rural area in eastern Ontario where tick-borne disease is endemic and often spent time in the woods. In hospital, the patient had a low blood cell count and developed shortness of breath, mild kidney injury and myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle. Doctors gave him the antibiotic doxycycline to cover a range of possible bacterial infections, including anaplasmosis, a lesser-known illness carried by the same...