Hey everyone, I hope you are enjoying this beautiful weather we have been having! This week I want to talk a little bit about some of the different thoughts surrounding Lyme Disease. You may hear one thing on the news, another thing from your healthcare provider, and another thing altogether from a friend or colleague, and it can all be very confusing at times.
In the early 1970s, in a town called Lyme, Connecticut, a group of children started coming down with some strange symptoms. It was initially thought to be Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (which is fairly rare), but some very observational moms in town noticed that the number of new cases of JRA was much higher than statistically normal, and they began to question whether something else might be going on.
By about the mid 1970s scientists had surmised that this was in fact a new disease, and they called it Lyme Disease, after the town’s name, but they were still unsure of what was causing this illness.
It wasn’t until 1981, when a scientist named Willy Burgdorfer discovered the bacterial spirochete that causes Lyme Disease, and the bacteria was then named after him: B. Burgdorferi. Understanding that Lyme was in fact a bacterial disease, treatment with antibiotics became the norm.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that there are 300,000 new cases of Lyme Disease in this country each year, and those are just the reported cases. This number does not reflect any people who may have undiagnosed Lyme, or who have Lyme and have been misdiagnosed as having something else.
Typically, treating Lyme Disease, there are a few main schools of thought.
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When we talk about treating Lyme Disease, there is the treatment of acute, very early-stage Lyme Disease, and there is treatment of late-stage, chronic Lyme and/or post-Lyme symptoms.
Early Lyme usually responds well to a course of antibiotics (typically 2-4 weeks). I personally know a handful of people whose Lyme story goes just like that. They got bit, got sick, took the antibiotics, got well. End of story. That’s definitely the best case scenario.
On the other hand, when Lyme is not diagnosed early, treatment gets much more tricky. When you hear someone with persistent Lyme symptoms talking about treatment, they may be talking about several different things.
Lyme is a difficult disease. Like other “hidden” illnesses, its patients are often presented with multiple opinions about how best to treat the disease and its many symptoms. We are learning more every day, and my hope is that one day there will be a much better understanding of how best to treat this complex illness.
Until next time, be well.
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