Determination of antibodies to Borrelia burgdorferi in the serum of patients living in Calabria, Southern Italy

The aim of our work was to determine the sere-prevalence of antibodies to B. burgdorferi in 300 patients living in Calabria, a region of southern Italy, The research of antibodies to B. burgdorferi was conducted by ELISA as a screening method and Western Blot as a confirmatory test, Out of the 300 patients we found a rate of positivity of 7.3% with ELISA and 4.5% with Western Blot, This data allows us to classify Calabria, among the regions where Lyme borreliosis is non-endemic and where sero-epidemiological research has been carried out on patients, as having a degree of positivity second to that of Campania (9.1%) and higher than Lombardy (3.2%) and Umbria (2.8%), Considering all the demographic and clinical data, only that of the higher Ige positivity of males over females is statistically significant.