FIG 3.

The number of patients experiencing multiple infections caused by the same B. burgdorferi strain is a function of the fraction of patients who develop strain-specific immunity. At least 70% of the patients must have developed strain-specific immunity for one or fewer patients to present with the same B. burgdorferi strain on multiple occasions (dashed line), regardless of the parameter sets investigated. Data shown were obtained by assuming strain-specific immunity of 5 years, 10 years, and 15 years. The analyses shown assume the probability distribution of B. burgdorferi strains derived from the work of Nadelman et al. (3). Error bars represent ranges of results for 10,000 simulations.