Recognition of novel infectious diseases has historically followed a prescribed course, which starts by defining a clinical syndrome. A prototypical example was the discovery of Lyme disease during the 1970s, which began with the description of epidemic oligoarticular arthritis (1), eventually followed by identification of the causative agent (2). In this issue, Chowdri and colleagues (3) contribute to the unfolding description of Borrelia miyamotoi infection—an illness with some similarities to Lyme disease but that was identified by reversing the traditional approach to disease discovery.

In 1995, a novel Borrelia species was isolated from the hard (ixodid) tick vector of Lyme ...

References

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