Lyme Disease - US NE

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

It's what the scientific data supports. Claims to the contrary are based not on evidence so much as fear or hope or anecdote or worse, blatant lies to extract profit from the sick. This issue has been investigated pretty carefully and the data simply doesn't support the tendency to label patients as chronic Lyme or to put them on very long term antibiotics.

As long as you carefully select your data, and suppress contrary data, that's true. The history of medicine is one long series of the Establishment being flat wrong, and harming people for decades before they finally come around to recognizing the truth. It's worse today because of the influence of drug companies.

Semmelweiss would have fared no better today.

 

[tractchores]

Ugh I hate ticks. We have lots of mice and lots of everything that eats mice. I toss out tick tubes twice a year. Not cheap, but after the first year we see a fraction of the ticks we used to. We're basically treating our mice for fleas and ticks.

Let's hope for a vaccine someday

 

[IslandTractor]

As long as you carefully select your data, and suppress contrary data, that's true. The history of medicine is one long series of the Establishment being flat wrong, and harming people for decades before they finally come around to recognizing the truth. It's worse today because of the influence of drug companies.

Semmelweiss would have fared no better today.

Semmelweiss is considered a hero today because he used DATA, not opinion or bias to prove his point. Your insinuation that only "carefully selected data" is used by the IDSA in coming up with their recommendations sounds like one of Trump's Alternative Facts. Think about it. IDSA could make lots more money for their members if they twisted the data around to suggest that lots of patients require specialized and continuous care from ID docs. They didn't. They looked at the data and concluded that limited, not extra antibiotic treatment was the appropriate course of therapy based on the best clinical studies available. Compare that to those who advocate long term antibiotic therapy who cherry pick anecdotal data and fail to publish in respected journals. If you are a dyed in the wool conspiracy lover then no amount of data or analysis will change your mind. If you are open minded then google the IDSA Lyme Disease statement and read it. Compare the thoroughness and logic behind that report to the websites of "Lyme Specialists" who just publish self serving opinions without verifiable or peer reviewed data. The Chronic Lyme Disease Industry, like the anti vaccine crowd, loves to demonize anyone who just reviews the actual published data. Think about who benefits financially. Follow the money.

 

[tcartwri]

Sadly, your friend was most likely diagnosed by a quack in the US. There are very rare cases of "chronic Lyme" but no where near as often as the diagnosis is made with poor evidence. If your friend is schizophrenic then perhaps that was his primary problem all along. The Infectious Diseases Society of America has published multiple careful reviews of the "chronic Lyme Disease" problem. Bottom line is that the vast majority of so called Chronic Lyme disease patients do not have the condition and have been misdiagnosed. Of course every individual case needs careful review but don't trust the "Lyme specialists" who are almost always general physicians who have found a good way to increase business. A board certified infectious diseases physician is who should be evaluating these cases. Perhaps your friend really does have "chronic Lyme" but I'd accept that diagnosis only if it was made at a major academic medical center.

well whatever happened to him, the results were very real and disturbing to those of us who experienced the changes. He was 55 at the time which usually is outside of the accepted range for schizophrenia onset.

 

[TemporaryKubotaOwnerMark]

Semmelweiss is considered a hero today because he used DATA, not opinion or bias to prove his point. ..... Think about who benefits financially. Follow the money.

The medical Establishment has been wrong time and time and time again. Review the history of medicine. It's a rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat story. Look up how long the Establishment ignored the DATA that proved that Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most ulcers. That wasn't back in the dark ages, that's just a few decades ago.


There is plenty of evidence that chronic Lyme exists, is more prevalent than the Establishment wants to admit, and yes, can cause mental problems like schizophrenia.

 

[IslandTractor]

well whatever happened to him, the results were very real and disturbing to those of us who experienced the changes. He was 55 at the time which usually is outside of the accepted range for schizophrenia onset.

Yes, the majority of schizophrenics have onset earlier in life but almost a quarter of all cases are diagnosed after age 40. Diagnosis at 55 is atypical but well recognized.

On the flip side, Lyme Disease is still pretty uncommon in Manitoba. In the past five years there have been an average of a few dozen cases diagnosed per year. Neurological involvement in Lyme is not typical so with only dozens of cases reported it is pretty unlikely that a rare neurological complication would occur. "Never say never" is a common aphorism in medical circles but at the same time it is clear that late onset schizophrenia would be far more common in Manitoba than a rare complication of Lyme.

Whatever the cause, I hope your friend is being followed by a good psychiatrist.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

As long as you carefully select your data, and suppress contrary data, that's true. The history of medicine is one long series of the Establishment being flat wrong, and harming people for decades before they finally come around to recognizing the truth. It's worse today because of the influence of drug companies.

Semmelweiss would have fared no better today.

Do a Google search for life expectancy over the past two centuries. Somebody must be doing something right.

 

[IslandTractor]

The medical Establishment has been wrong time and time and time again. Review the history of medicine. It's a rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat story. Look up how long the Establishment ignored the DATA that proved that Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most ulcers. That wasn't back in the dark ages, that's just a few decades ago.


There is plenty of evidence that chronic Lyme exists, is more prevalent than the Establishment wants to admit, and yes, can cause mental problems like schizophrenia.

Well, that is both true and fundamentally distorted. Sure, medicine is a human endeavor and has been developed both by well planned scientific studies and also by simple experience. Nobody has ever done a blinded controlled trial of appendectomy to treat appendicitis. Lots of therapies are adopted (more in the past than currently) simply because a physician claimed good results without critical review. We also know that once a therapy is well established that it takes more than a single study to turn around clinical practice. There was an excellent article in the NYT or New Yorker last month that demonstrates that point. So, yes, physicians and medical scientists have been wrong in the past and will be wrong again but that is no reason to reject medical science simply because you prefer a different unsubstantiated pseudotheory supported by alternative facts. Consider the analogy to weather forecasting. The weathermen are famous for getting their forecasts wrong. Weather forecasting is perhaps even more imprecise than medicine. Would you think it reasonable to therefore ignore a forecast of tornados or a hurricane? The example you gave of the "delayed" recognition of the role of H.pylori in gastric ulcers is really not a good one at all. Bacteria like structures were seen on biopsies. It took years to confirm that those bacteria were 1) real and 2) associated with all or most cases of ulcer and 3) causative. It took further work to show which antibiotic therapy was useful. That such a process took 5-10 years is really not very remarkable when you consider the amount of work and time necessary to explore and confirm the hypothesis. The first treatment regimen was described only five years after the first demonstration of bacteria in biopsies and the NIH published treatment standards only 12 years later. Not much of a delay at all.

The fact that you can point to one of many many errors in medical history does not in anyway support the notion that "Chronic Lyme Disease" even exists much less can it be treated with long term antibiotics. Post Therapeutic Lyme symptoms may be reported in a relatively small percentage of patients. We don't understand the phenomenon well but like a number of other infectious diseases there may be post infectious immune phenomenon that take months or even years to calm down. What we do know is that there is no evidence that prolonged treatment with antibiotics makes those post therapeutic symptoms disappear more rapidly than not giving antibiotics. What has also been clearly demonstrated is that giving prolonged antibiotics can be harmful. If there is no evidence that prolonged therapy does any good and we know that it can be harmful, it is wrong to do it.

 

[/pine]

Semmelweiss is considered a hero today because he used DATA, not opinion or bias to prove his point. Your insinuation that only "carefully selected data" is used by the IDSA in coming up with their recommendations sounds like one of Trump's Alternative Facts. Think about it. IDSA could make lots more money for their members if they twisted the data around to suggest that lots of patients require specialized and continuous care from ID docs. They didn't. They looked at the data and concluded that limited, not extra antibiotic treatment was the appropriate course of therapy based on the best clinical studies available. Compare that to those who advocate long term antibiotic therapy who cherry pick anecdotal data and fail to publish in respected journals. If you are a dyed in the wool conspiracy lover then no amount of data or analysis will change your mind. If you are open minded then google the IDSA Lyme Disease statement and read it. Compare the thoroughness and logic behind that report to the websites of "Lyme Specialists" who just publish self serving opinions without verifiable or peer reviewed data. The Chronic Lyme Disease Industry, like the anti vaccine crowd, loves to demonize anyone who just reviews the actual published data. Think about who benefits financially. Follow the money.

Dang I.S....change a name and a few other words and you could be talking about the AGW debacle...LoL...!

 

[hillwood]

I wonder how they do that...the tick itself is no bigger than a pencil point (a tad bigger if it imbeds and starts drinking) so the larvae have to be microscopic. I did hear of a turkey hunter opening up the crop of a bird and found it was full of wood ticks.

I don't know how they can find the little things. I just know a lot of people have them and they do control the bugs.