This article reviews the primary tick-borne diseases in Poland, focusing on Lyme borreliosis and tick-borne encephalitis (TBE). The common tick (Ixodes ricinus) across Poland carries multiple pathogens; Lyme disease is widely distributed nationwide, whereas TBE is concentrated in specific high-risk pockets, particularly in the northeast and select southern regions. Reporting for both diseases has risen steadily over time—a trend driven in part by heightened public awareness and improved diagnostic capabilities. We also emphasized that infection risk directly correlates with outdoor exposure in forested environments, placing forestry workers, farmers, and mushroom or berry gatherers at higher risk.
This paper was originally prepared for a conference on neuroinfections and published in a special supplement of the Polish journal “Epidemiological Review”. It summarized a decade of national surveillance data on tick-borne infections in Poland. Even though this specific supplement was not indexed in PubMed, the article was widely cited, as comprehensive resources on tick-borne diseases were scarce for that period.