Estimated number of symptomatic Lyme borreliosis cases in Germany in 2021 after adjusting for under-ascertainment

Background: Although nine of 16 federal states in Germany conduct public health surveillance for Lyme borreliosis (LB), the extent of under-ascertainment is unknown.

Objective: As a model for European countries that conduct LB surveillance, we sought to estimate the population-based incidence of symptomatic LB after adjusting for under-ascertainment.

Methods: Estimating seroprevalence-derived under-ascertainment relies on data from seroprevalence studies, public health surveillance, and published literature. The number of symptomatic LB cases in states that conduct LB surveillance was estimated from studies reporting the seroprevalence of antibodies against Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, the proportion of LB cases that are asymptomatic, and the duration of antibody detection. The number of estimated incident symptomatic LB cases was compared with the number of surveillance-reported LB cases to derive under-ascertainment multipliers. The multipliers were applied to the number of 2021 surveillance-reported LB cases to estimate the population-based incidence of symptomatic LB in Germany.

Results: Adjusting for seroprevalence-based under-ascertainment multipliers, the estimated number of symptomatic LB cases in states that conducted surveillance was 129,870 (408 per 100,000 population) in 2021. As there were 11,051 surveillance-reported cases in 2021 in these states, these data indicate there were 12 symptomatic LB cases for every surveillance-reported LB case.

Conclusions: We demonstrate that symptomatic LB is underdetected in Germany and that this seroprevalence-based approach can be applied elsewhere in Europe where requisite data are available. Nationwide expansion of LB surveillance would further elucidate the true LB disease burden in Germany and could support targeted disease prevention efforts to address the high LB disease burden.