One of the most nasty and difficult to treat persistent infections is Lyme Disease. It is caused by bacteria spread by the deer tick. There really no sense in running away. The damn things are everywhere.

the deer tick, geneus Ixodes

the "bull eye" pattern that appears soon after a tick bite that is common in lyme cases

Lyme disease is pretty nasty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease). It's not fatal but it is debilitating. For years doctors have wondered- why does lyme disease respond so well to anti-biotics sometimes and so poorly in other cases?

Borrelia burgdorferi- this nasty little spirochete has a double membraned envelope. It is predominate in North America but is also present in Europe.

The answer may well be that there are several infectious agents causing very similar disease.

In the past six months two new infectious agents have been discovered that cause what has been diagnosed as Lyme disease BUT the infectious agent is something altogether different than the Borrelia bacteria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borrelia_burgdorferi) that causes the vast majority of Lyme disease cases.

The Heartland Virus was identified in August 2012. It presents itself almost identically to Lyme disease (http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/news/20120829/new-tick-borne-disease-heartland-virus).

The latest discovery is an as yet unnamed febrile illness very similar to lyme disease but caused by Borrelia miyamotoi which is native to and first identified in central Russia. Of all the cases treated in the study, 3% of them turned out to be caused by the organism. (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/255152.php)

Hopefully the discovery that lyme disease may be caused by a spectrum of organisms will lead to better diagnostics and treatments.

Ticks are very efficient vectors of zoonotic infections (diseases that pass from animals to man). They should be strenuously avoided. Should you get one, remove it as soon as possible without crushing the body of the tick. Its ability to transmit disease is proportional to how long it stays attached. If you are bitten and see the bullseye pattern around the bite, see a doctor asap. Best to treat it before it gets established.