A new bug - worse than Lyme Disease?

From the New York City CBS affiliate:

New Tick-Borne Illness Could Be Worse Than Lyme Disease
A new disease spread by deer ticks has already infected 100,000 New Yorkers since the state first started keeping track.

As CBS 2�s Dr. Max Gomez reported, the new deer tick-borne illness resembles Lyme disease, but is a different malady altogether � and it could be even worse.

Some more:

Fallon, a renowned expert on Lyme disease at the New York Psychiatric Institute, said the importance of the new bacterium � called Borrelia miyamotoi � is that it might explain cases of what looked like chronic Lyme disease, but did not test positive for Lyme.

�The problem is that the diagnosis is going to be missed, because doctors aren�t going to think about Borrelia miyamotoi because they don�t know about it. And number two, if they test for Lyme disease, it will test negative, and the rash won�t be there,� Fallon said. �So they are not going to treat with the antibiotics, so the patient will have an infection staying in their system longer than it should.

The good news is that Borrelia miyamotoi responds well to antibiotics. The bad news is that the tick is about the size of a sesame seed, not something you would notice without a detailed examination...