Controversial Guidelines Of Treatment Of Lyme Disease Is Left In Action

Controversial Guidelines Of Treatment Of Lyme Disease Is Left In Action.
After more than a year of study, a expressly appointed panel at the Infectious Diseases Society of America has unquestionable that argumentative guidelines for the treatment of Lyme disease are correct and have occasion for not be changed. The guidelines, first adopted in 2006, have long advocated for the short-term (less than a month) antibiotic curing of new infections of Lyme disease, which is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi, a bacteria transmitted to humans via tick bites.

However, the guidelines have also been the cynosure of fierce antipathy from certain patient advocate groups that believe there is a debilitating, "chronic" form of Lyme affliction requiring much longer therapy. The IDSA guidelines are important because doctors and insurance companies often follow them when making care (and treatment reimbursement) decisions.

The new review was sparked by an review launched by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, whose office had concerns about the process cast-off to draft the guidelines. "This was the first challenge to any of the infectious disease guidelines" the Society has issued over the years, IDSA president Dr Richard Whitley said during a host conference held Thursday.

Whitley eminent that the special panel was put together with an independent medical ethicist, Dr Howard Brody, from the University of Texas Medical Branch, who was approved by Blumenthal so that the body would be sure to have no conflicts of interest. The guidelines check 69 recommendations, Dr Carol J Baker, stool of the Review Panel, and pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Baylor College of Medicine, said during the cluster conference.

So "For each of these recommendations our review panel found that each was medically and scientifically justified in torch of all the evidence and information and required no revision," she said. For all but one of the votes the committee agreed unanimously, Baker added.

Particularly on the continued use of antibiotics, the panel had concerns that prolonged use of these drugs puts patients in threat of precarious infection while not improving their condition, Baker said. "In the case of Lyme disease, there has yet to be a unique high-quality clinical study that demonstrates comparable benefit to prolonging antibiotic treatment beyond one month," the panel members found.

As to the existence of a chronic, persistent form of Lyme disease, the panel concluded that "symptoms that are commonly attributed to lasting or persistent Lyme, such as arthralgias, weaken and cognitive dysfunction, are seen in many other clinical conditions and are, in fact, common in the general population. It would thus be clinically inane to make the diagnosis of Lyme disease using these nonspecific findings alone".

Baker notable that so far there has been no comment from Attorney General Blumenthal on the panel's decision. "I think the attorney combined was misguided by the [Lyme disease] activists," Whitley said. "I do not think his contention against the Infectious Diseases Society was either justified or warranted," he added.

Whitley distinguished that the Society will be reviewing these guidelines again in another two years and at the same epoch the US Institute of Medicine is working on its own report on the disease. However, the committee's affirmation of the guidelines is seen by some to be a gloss over because, they claim, the review process was biased.

Dr Robert Bransfield, president of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, said: "How can there be such aggregate consensus with any detailed issue? It's beyond comprehension". Bransfield added, "It makes me prodigy about the accuracy of the process. This is what everybody was expecting that they would do: a process that would rubber-stamp it and basically validate what was there before. It's a apply to because it does compromise the best interest of patients".

Another critic, Dr Raphael B Stricker, a San Francisco doctor who treats chronic Lyme disease, said that "when the panel votes eight-nothing on almost every unattached recommendation, that suggests that there is something wrong with the process. "Until we get a de facto objective review by an objective panel that's not all in Infectious Diseases Society of America's pocket, you are succeeding to get the kind of thing you see with this, and that's a problem," Stricker said.

On the other incidental of the issue, Phillip J Baker, executive director of the American Lyme Disease Foundation, said he was on top of the world by the outcome. "I have always felt, and so did many of my colleagues, that the guidelines are based on decisive and established evidence," Baker said. Baker has sympathy for people suffering from the torture and fatigue associated with chronic Lyme disease.

But "These people are suffering from something and no dubiety they need proper medical care," he said. "But they are not suffering from a persistent infection that can be treated by long-term antibiotic therapy altraday cap ranbaxy. They have something grim that needs to be treated, but it's not due to Lyme disease".