![]() Īt least 25 providers of nonstandard Lyme-related services have been subjected to disciplinary action, regulatory action, and/or criminal prosecution.Ī false positive diagnosis of Lyme disease can lead to (a) harmful side effects without clinical benefit, (b) an increase in the risk of creating infectious organisms resistant to the antibiotics used to treat Lyme disease, and delay in diagnosing the patient’s true condition. The relations and actions of some activists, medical practitioners, and commercial bodies involved in Lyme disease advocacy pose a threat to public health.Similar to other antiscience groups, these advocates have created a pseudoscientific and alternative selection of practitioners, research, and publications and have coordinated public protests, accused opponents of both corruption and conspiracy, and spurred legislative efforts to subvert evidence-based medicine and peer-reviewed science.Some activists portray Lyme disease, a geographically limited tick-borne infection, as a disease that is insidious, ubiquitous, difficult to diagnose, and almost incurable they also propose that the disease causes mainly non-specific symptoms that can be treated only with long-term antibiotics and other unorthodox and unvalidated treatments.Advocacy for Lyme disease has become an increasingly important part of an antiscience movement that denies both the viral cause of AIDS and the benefits of vaccines and that supports unproven (sometimes dangerous) alternative medical treatments.In 2011, a team of experts severely criticized this approach in a report that concluded: Ī tiny minority of doctors reject the IDSA guidelines and assert that Lyme often becomes chronic and requires months or even years of antibiotic treatment. CDC recommends following the IDSA guidelines. The guidelines call for patients diagnosed with Lyme disease to be treated with oral or intravenous antibiotics for 10 to 28 days, which will relieve symptoms in 80%-90% of patients. The 9000-member Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), which is the most prominent professional organization for infectious disease specialists, has issued evidence-based guidelines for diagnosing and treating Lyme disease. ![]() So far, 85 initial and confirmatory diagnostic blood tests for Lyme disease have been cleared by the FDA. The FDA states that a laboratory-based diagnosis of Lyme disease is appropriate only if the Western Blot is positive. If an initial enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay test is positive or indeterminate, it is followed by a confirmatory Western Blot test. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends a two-test process to detect antibodies against B. Patients usually have a history of exposure to ticks along with symptoms that include fever, fatigue, muscle, and joint aches, and a characteristic rash. Lyme disease is caused by infection with the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi transmitted to humans by the bite of an infected tick.
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