Vol. 31 No. 2 (2025): REVIEW OF MEDICAL PRACTICE
Dear Readers,
the latest issue of ‘Review of Medical Practice’ is devoted to an extremely important and rapidly evolving area of medicine – tick-borne diseases and other, often underestimated infectious threats. In an era of growing environmental awareness and changing climatic conditions, the problem of communicable diseases, especially vector-borne diseases, is becoming particularly important. The increase in recreational activities in the natural environment, the urbanisation of rural areas and the globalisation of travel contribute to an increased risk of exposure to pathogens that were previously considered rare or endemic to remote geographical regions.
The issue opens with an article entitled Forgotten tick-borne diseases with high expansion potential, which focuses on anaplasmosis, babesiosis, bartonellosis and tularemia. The authors highlight the growing pathogenicity of these infections in humans and their gradually expanding geographical range. The article is a valuable source of information on the aetiology, epidemiology, clinical symptoms, diagnosis and prevention of these diseases, which are often overlooked in everyday medical practice. It draws attention to the fact that an active lifestyle, combined with longer life expectancy and diseases that lower immunity, increases the risk of more severe courses and long-term clinical consequences of these infections.
The article Rickettsiosis and Q fever: an underestimated health threat to humans discusses rickettsiosis and Q fever. These are infectious zoonotic diseases which, due to their non-specific clinical picture and diagnostic difficulties, are rarely considered in differential diagnosis. The authors describe in detail the aetiological factors, routes of transmission, clinical expression and diagnostic and therapeutic principles, emphasising the need to raise medical awareness in this area. In the context of current geopolitical events, such as the conflict in Ukraine, this article rightly draws attention to the potential risk of a resurgence of typhus in Europe.
Another article, The importance of ticks in the epidemiology of selected infectious diseases, focuses on Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis, the two most common tick-borne diseases in Europe. The authors present a comprehensive analysis of the aetiology, life cycles, epidemiology, clinical symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of these diseases, as well as the impact of climate change on the spread of tick habitats and, consequently, the increase in the incidence of these diseases.
Clinically and pathomorphologically well-documented, unusual case of actinomycosis reminds us of one of the most forgotten, diagnostically difficult and underestimated diseases in human pathology (Actinomycosis as an unexpected cause of chronic generalized lymphadenopathy).
I hope that this issue of “Review of Medical Practice” will become a valuable tool for doctors, medical students and anyone interested in tick-borne diseases and other neglected infections that are real in Poland, contributing to faster and more accurate diagnosis and more effective treatment of patients.
Wishing you an interesting read
Editor-in-Chief dr hab. n. med. Anna Wilmowska-Pietruszyńska, prof. UŁa
