A Novel Scoring System Approach to Assess Patients with Lyme Disease (Nutech Functional Score)

INTRODUCTION: A bacterial infection by Borrelia burgdorferi referred to as Lyme disease (LD) or borreliosis is transmitted mostly by a bite of the tick Ixodes scapularis in the USA and Ixodes ricinus in Europe. Various tests are used for the diagnosis of LD, but their results are often unreliable. We compiled a list of clinically visible and patient-reported symptoms that are associated with LD. Based on this list, we developed a novel scoring system. METHODOLOGY: Nutech functional Score (NFS), which is a 43 point positional (every symptom is subgraded and each alternative gets some points according to its position) and directional (moves in direction bad to good) scoring system that assesses the patient's condition. RESULTS: The grades of the scoring system have been converted into numeric values for conducting probability based studies. Each symptom is graded from 1 to 5 that runs in direction BAD → GOOD. CONCLUSION: NFS is a unique tool that can be used universally to assess the condition of patients with LD.