Why primary care research?

This primary care setting is uniquely relevant to chronic Lyme disease epidemiology, given the availability of front line personnel treating Lyme disease, the ability to examine the entire cohort of Lyme disease patients, and the potential for conducting rapidly evolving or emergent research. Research in the primary care setting resolves methodologic problems, such as documenting the accuracy of a customary procedure in preparation for use in epidemiologic research (referral bias), or evaluating the effect of Lyme disease diagnosis and/or treatment on risk factor estimates derived from case-control studies. Patients will be drawn from patients identified by the Surveillance Database. This comprehensive cohort improves the generalizability of the result to the general Lyme disease population. The control population drawn from the same primary care practice in an endemic area for Lyme disease allows generalizability to the primary care setting.