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.