Not just Miranda Hart: Why do so many celebrities have Lyme disease?

Miranda Hart has revealed that she was left bedbound and struggling for years after she was diagnosed with Lyme disease.

The actress and comedian, who is best known from her eponymous BBC sitcom Miranda, told The One Show of her experience with chronic fatigue, which was triggered by the Lyme disease.

“Because once you’ve been bed and housebound with a fatigue-based chronic illness that takes a long time to be diagnosed — which sadly I know a lot of people will know — you miss life a lot. So I’m thrilled to be sitting here,” she said.

“Unless you’ve had fatigue [like that], you don’t understand what literally not getting off the floor is,” Hart also told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“I was basically bedbound and housebound. There’d be times where I’d look at a glass of water, and think, I don’t know how to pick that up.”

While Lyme disease is rare in the UK, with around 1,500 laboratory-confirmed cases of Lyme disease in England and Wales each year (which, for a population of 67 million, is low), it’s become a hot topic among celebrities due to its prevalence in the United States, and its risk of misdiagnosis.

Lyme disease can be acquired through the bite of an infected blacklegged tick, which is more commonly known as a deer tick.

It’s typically first noticed when a “bullseye” rash surrounds the infection site. The infection can cause flu-like symptoms at first, including a temperature, fever, headache, muscle or joint pain and tiredness and loss of energy.

However, it’s the long term symptoms that some celebrities have been raising awareness of recently. These are rare, occurring in 5 to 10 per cent of cases, and develop after treatment. Known as “post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome”, this syndrome lead Lyme disease sufferers to develop arthritis, chronic pain, heart palpitations and brain inflammations.

Miranda Hart’s diagnosis is the latest in a long, recent line of celebrities who have spoken publicly about battling Lyme disease.

One of these is Bella Hadid, who has taken time out of her modelling career to deal with the complications of her diagnosis.

“I know what it feels like to not want to get out of bed from bone pains and exhaustion and days on end of not wanting to socialize or be around people because the anxiety and brain fog just isn’t worth it,” Hadid said in a speech at the 2016 Global Lyme Alliance. “After years of this, you begin to get used to living with the sickness, instead of getting cured and moving on with your life.”

Hadid’s mother, Yolanda, and brother, Anwar, also suffer from Lyme disease.

Riley Keogh is another celebrity who has been open about her diagnosis, sharing that she delivered her daughter Tupelo via surrogacy due to Keogh’s Lyme-related health complications.

“I can carry children,” she told Vanity Fair, “but it felt like the best choice for what I had going on physically with the autoimmune stuff.”

Singer Justin Bieber also suffers from Lyme disease, opening up about his diagnosis via Instagram in 2020 after fans became concerned for his health. “While a lot of people kept saying Justin Bieber looks like s***, on meth etc, they failed to realize I’ve been recently diagnosed with Lyme disease,” he wrote on Instagram.

“It’s been a rough couple years but getting the right treatment that will help treat this so far incurable disease and I will be back and better than ever.”

There has been a huge increase in the number of people reportedly suffering from Lyme disease in the United States according to data from the CDC, though some people are suspicious of its accuracy.

Nearly half a million US citizens reported suffering from Lyme disease in 2022. But because this data is made up of self-reported diagnoses, the CDC says that this number is likely to be inflated due to patients diagnosed on “clinical suspicion” when they do not actually have Lyme disease.

This has fostered a suspicion around fake and mis-diagnoses, hence the derogatory nickname.

Lyme disease is actually very difficult to diagnose, and many celebrities have reported issues with being mistakenly diagnosed with other health conditions.

Kris Kristofferson, the country music legend who recently passed away aged 88, once revealed that he was mistakenly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when he actually had Lyme disease.

Miranda Hart’s comments mark one of the first times a British celebrity has spoken about struggling with the disease, because it is simply not as common in the UK. There are places in the UK where Lyme disease poses more of a risk, namely the south of England and the Scottish Highlands.

In 2017, more specific high risk areas were named, including Exmoor, the New Forest and other rural areas of Hampshire, the South Downs, parts of Wiltshire and Berkshire, parts of Surrey and West Sussex, Thetford Forest in Norfolk, the Lake District, the North York Moors and the Scottish Highlands.

In the US, Lyme disease is more common, with an average of 40 cases per 100,000 people, compared to the UK, where there is an average of 2.77 cases per 100,000 people. High risk areas in the US include the northeast, upper midwest and northwestern states.