Under what (if any) circumstances is Lyme Disease an STD?

Under what (if any) circumstances is Lyme Disease an STD?Are patients on antibiotics able to spread Lyme Disease? What about those who are not on treatment? It seems that even the medical community is not sure if Lyme IS even sexually transmitted...
the back and forth I found here : http://www.anapsid.org/lyme/matthewgoss/sexualtrans.html
is what prompted my question--a desire for a definitive answer (if one exists). Thanks for the answers so far!

vamedicca is back
I have never heard of Lyme being sexually transmitted.

Edit: I just looked it up. You learn something new every day. Click this link for more info.:
http://lyme-disease.emedtv.com/lyme-disease/lyme-disease-transmission.html

Brutally Honest
I believe that the only time that Lyme Disease would be considered an STD was if you were having sex with a deer tick when you contracted it.

Lyme Disease is contracted from the bite of the deer tick; I don't believe that it is in any way communicable.

Dekayel
Sexual transmission of Lyme disease has not been scientifically proven. However, it's not been studied much, either.

There's a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that in some cases it might be sexually transmitted. And of course, the Lyme spirochete is related to the spirochete that causes syphilis. Some Lyme doctors suggest testing the patient's partner, just to be safe.

Lyme can be transmitted from the mother to an unborn baby, like syphilis and other STDs.

Good sources of info about Lyme disease:
http://www.lymedisease.org
http://www.canlyme.com
http://www.lymenet.org
http://www.lymeinfo.net
http://www.lymediseaseassociation.org
http://www.ilads.org
http://www.betterhealthguy.com

The Markster
That's precisely true. No-one is sure whether the borrelia Burgderfori can be transmitted sexually. There are no documented cases, atleast as of this last summer (2008). Such documentation is hard to confirm as both partners are often shown to have had nearly equal exposure to ticks that can transmit the disease, hence the difficulty in proving any infection from the partner came from sexual contact vs. the usual route(s).

As Lyme is a distant relative of syphilis, it IS a theoretical possibility,
but as the borrelia don't get a chance to "hang out" in the blood of a new host, like they do when they're inside a "feeding" tick, their chance to adapt their outer [Osp-C] layer or "coating" to be similar to that of the cells of the potential new host's blood- doesn't OCCUR. This adapting, prior to leaving the tick's mid-gut, is thought to be a factor in the ability of the borrelia to cloak themselves from the new host's immune system when they finally enter the body (at the tick bite site).
And, of course, the anti-bacterial environment posed by a healthy vaginal wall is another inhibiting factor.

Then again, these Lyme critters have a knack of adapting to hostile environments! More studies are certainly in order.

Give your answer to this question below! Learn about different types of STDs and the effects on the body in both women and men. Sexually Transmitted Diseases Info Blog.

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