Diagnosis and treatment experts of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses will participate in a meeting next weekend during the 15th annual Lyme & Tick-Borne Diseases Conference of the Lyme Disease Association and the Columbia Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center.

The meeting will be held on Saturday and Sunday at the Providence Marriott Downtown. The event will see physicians, nurses, psychologists, scientists and public health workers coming from the US and Europe. Public can also participate in the event.

Those who want to register online will have to pay the conference cost of $220 and those who want to get registered at the event will have to pay $230.

Vaccines and treatments are the topics to be discussed during the event in addition to potential new ways to diagnose Lyme disease. What impact Lyme disease has on brain will be discussed in details during Sunday morning. Also, there will be presentations on suicide and Lyme disease. Attendees will get a fair chance to mingle with the presenters.

A study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned last year that the cases of Lyme disease were 10 times higher than believed, with 300,000 new diagnoses happening every year. This makes Lyme disease as the second most common infectious disease in the country to tie with gonorrhea after Chlamydia. Lyme disease is spread by the blacklegged tick and its occurrence rate has reached a 20-year-high in Ohio.

Lois Hall, executive director of the Ohio Public Health Association, said some health departments have devised ways to continue monitoring ticks and mosquitoes.

"For the most part, our state was running around with its pants down, waiting for some epidemic to happen", Hall said. A public-health entomologist, Dr. Richard Gary, is still being employed by the state to keep an eye on Lyme disease and other illnesses carried by insects.