Re: 2003: Birds, Migration and Emerging Zoonoses: West Nile Virus, Lyme Disease...

well, one thing about birds is they have a higher body temperature
usually between 105 and 111 degrees F, which goes even higher during
long distance migration flights which produce a lot of heat in such
small animals with high metabolisms. these temperatures would
apparently be incompatible with BB being able to really cause a
"clinical infection" in most birds. of course they can carry the ticks.
more research needs to be done in this area, since it is relevant to
the spread of lyme disease, the paper published a few years back in
nature that demonstrated migratory re-activation of borrelia infection
in birds (via antibody response, not DNA detection) also needs
following up. there is something not quite right about theories
involving birds and lyme disease.

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