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Welcome to the Inquiry from the BBC World Service.
I'm Charmaine Kosier.
Each week one question, four expert witnesses and an answer.
July 2025, singers Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber have a lot in common, besides sharing a name.
By the time they were teenagers, they were global superstars.
Their music has sold millions of albums and had billions of streams.
Then Justin Timberlake posts a message on Instagram revealing another, more personal connection.
He's living with the long-term effects of Lyme disease.
It's a bacterial infection spread to humans by ticks.
Justin Bieber shared his own diagnosis five years ago.
Since then, reported cases have risen in the US.
It's a complicated condition that scientists are still working to fully understand.
So this week we're asking, why are more people getting Lyme disease?
Every time a celebrity announces that they've got Lyme disease,
we see the number of samples that we receive in the laboratory increase quite significantly.
And there's also been studies carried out looking at Google searches.
Dr Sally Maven is a clinical scientist and director of the Scottish Lyme disease and tick-borne infections reference lab at Rakemore Hospital in Inverness.
When a celebrity announces they've got Lyme disease,
the number of Google hits on Lyme disease pages increases quite significantly as well.