Does anyone have lyme disease

It is ludicrous! There is however sufficient data to proof that these ongoing symptoms are caused by immunological mechanisms. This debate got so much out of hand and the chronic Lyme religion became so insensitive to scientific arguments that has to stop.

We should end this by putting all those doctors in jail for medical misconduct. Any clarifications would be appreciated on this and the nature of the actual controversy. Jonathan lock, thanks for posting that link.

And when people hear that, they do a basic google search and find the the cdc, Mayo Clinic websites at the top of the page, read for a minute or two and conclude the there must not be such thing as chronic Lyme disease since the cdc says so and they set the standards. The volume of research that has illustrated the ability of borrelia to become chronic and resistant to immune system and antibiotics is overwhelming. The whole thing is just getting ridiculous. The cdc knows the truth about this bacteria.

There statements are false, or more accurately lies, and this will be a massive disgrace to the organization in time. The ball is already rolling. There are many pathogens coming through various vectors. Many people with lyme disease test positively for Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, Tick borne Typhus, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and other spotted fevers, Babesia duncani, microti, divergens and many more , Bartonella and Bartonella and Babesia like and Borrelia like organisms, BR 91 is in mosquitoes in Europe.

Tularemia, Coxiella burnetti, Leptospirosis, Toxoplasma, Mycoplasmas, Chlamydias, Midichloria mitochondrii and its related Montezuma, thousands of viruses, parasites are all within lyme patients. Many of these can switch from an acute to chronic form.

Next generation DNA sequencing would be a better detection modality than looking for antibody production, especially when so many people with lyme have CVID or common variable immune deficiency and are not building antibodies. We need research to figure out how pathogens can circumvent or cripple the immune system. We need to figure out how auto immune conditions are showing up so prevalently in those with lyme.

Colonization of the gut occurs in those with lyme and we have to be able to reverse that as well. We desperately need research funds to go to the correct research that will figure out ways to eradicate these pathogens. Antibiotics are highly discouraged while opioids and antidepressants are handed out readily with little mention of side effects.

Patients have no power relative to these three powerful groups and the negative outcomes and treatment are reflective of this. Please look up the the class action Lyme lawsuit filed against the IDSA doctors and insurance companies in Texas where I was told it does not exist in late I think this is also directly related to the opioid crisis in the interference of business interests influencing medicine.

And to everyone who has lyme, keep fighting. Campos for taking the time to write this article. As a patient whose life was forever altered two years ago following a tick bite, I sincerely appreciate your balanced view of the issue. The only thing worse than the suffering I have had to endure during that time is the horrendously contentious disagreement surrounding the illness that left me to fend completely for myself.

Thanks for visiting. Don't miss your FREE gift. Sign up to get tips for living a healthy lifestyle, with ways to fight inflammation and improve cognitive health , plus the latest advances in preventative medicine, diet and exercise , pain relief, blood pressure and cholesterol management, and more. Get helpful tips and guidance for everything from fighting inflammation to finding the best diets for weight loss Stay on top of latest health news from Harvard Medical School.

Recent Blog Articles. Health news headlines can be deceiving. Why is topical vitamin C important for skin health? Preventing preeclampsia may be as simple as taking an aspirin. Caring for an aging parent? Tips for enjoying holiday meals. A conversation about reducing the harms of social media. Menopause and memory: Know the facts. How to get your child to put away toys. Is a common pain reliever safe during pregnancy?

Print This Page Click to Print. She said doctors should be alert to the risks if the patient has a history of walking in the outdoors in areas where there are ticks. Ms Calderwood said it was hard for GPs because a patient's symptoms could be vague - tiredness, muscle ache, maybe a runny nose - and the likelihood of it being Lyme disease was quite small. There is a distinctive rash which is shaped like a bullseye but not everyone gets one and this can make diagnosis tricky. Health guidelines say for most people a course of antibiotics is an effective treatment but many claim they have a chronic form of the disease that persists with severe symptoms.

Morven-May, from the Black Isle, is now 26 but she was just 14 when she suddenly fell ill. I was one of these really annoying people who never, ever stopped. I just kept going. I just bounced everywhere. All that changed when what started off feeling like the flu became more serious. She said: "I'd fall asleep in the school bus and I would come home and I would just collapse in a heap on the couch. I literally got up, went to school and collapsed in utter exhaustion each day.

The back of my neck went cold. For nearly 20 years I had tried to find a doctor who would think the problem was something other than dry skin. I had asked friends if they had any idea what I was talking about. No one ever did. I had thought I was imagining it, or being oversensitive—or was somehow at fault. To see my ordeal described in familiar, torturous detail jolted me to attention. Lyme Disease was discovered in Connecticut in the mids. Today it is a major, and growing, health threat, whose reach extends well beyond its initial East Coast locus.

Reported cases increased almost fivefold from to , and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that annual incidences have risen to more than ,, and may even range above , In the summer in the eastern United States, many parents I know cover their children from head to toe—never mind the heat—for a hike in the woods or a jaunt to a grassy playground.

Read: What tick saliva does to the human body. For most of those who get swiftly diagnosed and treated, that will be the end of the story.

But lots of Americans have also heard secondhand reports of people who stayed sick after that course of antibiotics. And lots know of cases in which no rash appeared and a diagnosis came late, when damage had already been wrought. Plenty of others, upon discovering an attached deer tick, have encountered doctors who balk at prescribing antibiotics to treat a possible Lyme infection, wary of overdiagnosis.

The degree of alarm and confusion about such a long-standing public-health issue is extraordinary. Even as changes in the climate and in land use are causing a dramatic rise in Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, the American medical establishment remains entrenched in a struggle over who can be said to have Lyme disease and whether it can become chronic—and if so, why. The standoff has impeded research that could help break the logjam and clarify how a wily bacterium, and the co-infections that can come with it, can affect human bodies.

When I got my inconclusive diagnosis, I knew better than to dream of a quick cure. Lyme Disease came into public view when an epidemic of what appeared to be rheumatoid arthritis began afflicting children in Lyme, Connecticut. A young rheumatologist at Yale named Allen Steere, who now conducts research at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, studied the children. After much study, Steere realized that the black-legged ticks that live on mice and deer among other mammals might be harboring a pathogen responsible for the outbreak.

In , the medical entomologist Willy Burgdorfer finally identified the bacterium that causes Lyme , and it was named after him: Borrelia burgdorferi. Hard to find in the bloodstream and other body fluids, the B. If it goes untreated, B.

Infectious diseases are the kind of clear-cut illness that our medical system generally excels at handling. Evidence indicated that the prescribed treatment protocol—a few weeks of oral antibiotics, typically doxycycline—would take care of most cases that were caught early, while late-stage cases of Lyme disease might require intravenous antibiotics for up to a month.

In late June, a revised draft called for, among other things, a shorter course—10 days—of doxycycline for patients with early Lyme. Yet the picture on the ground looked far murkier. A significant percentage of people who had Lyme symptoms and later tested positive for the disease had never gotten the rash. Others had many characteristic symptoms but tested negative for the infection, and entered treatment anyway. They also started testing assiduously for tick-borne co-infections, which were appearing in some of the sickest patients.

Many of these doctors rotated drugs in the hope of finding a more effective regimen. Some patients responded well. In , these doctors banded together to form the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society.

But some prominent Lyme-disease researchers were skeptical that the infection could persist after treatment—that bacteria could remain in the body. They argued that many chronic Lyme-disease patients were being treated for an infection they no longer had, while others had never had Lyme disease in the first place but had appropriated the diagnosis for symptoms that could easily have other causes.

Under the sway of that ideology, it contended, credulous patients were needlessly being treated with dangerous IV antibiotics by irresponsible physicians. The IDSA also highlighted statistics suggesting that the commonly cited chronic Lyme symptoms—ongoing fatigue, brain fog, joint pain—occurred no more frequently in Lyme patients than in the general population. In the press, experts in this camp implied that patients who believed they had been sick with Lyme disease for years were deluded or mentally ill.

Hostilities continued to intensify, not just between patients and experts, but between community doctors and academic doctors. By the time the doctor first floated the possibility, in , that I might have Lyme, my headaches, brain fog, and joint pain had gotten much worse, and tiny bruises had bloomed all over my legs and arms. I was so dizzy that I began fainting. I could no more touch the old delights of my life than a firefly could touch the world beyond the jar in which it had been caught.

Imperfect diagnostics lie at the core of the whole debate over Lyme disease. Instead, they assess indirectly: They look for the antibodies the small proteins our bodies create to fight infection produced in response to the bacteria. But antibody production takes time, which means early detection can be hard. And once produced, antibodies can last for years, which makes it difficult to see whether an infection is resolved, or even whether a new one has occurred.

I was confused. My doctor showed me mixed results from three labs. Two had a positive response on one part of the test but not the other, while the third had a negative response on both parts. Because of my medical history as well as particular findings on my tests, she concluded that I probably did have Lyme disease.

But she also noted that I had a few nasty viruses, including Epstein-Barr. In addition, the test may have been picking up on autoimmune antibodies, given my earlier diagnosis.

At the recommendation of a science-writer friend, I finally went to see Richard Horowitz , a doctor in upstate New York who specializes in Lyme disease and had earned a reputation as a brilliant diagnostician.

He recently served as a member of the Tick-Borne Disease Working Group convened by the Department of Health and Human Services, which in issued a report to Congress outlining problems with the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme patients. I had brought along a stack of lab results nearly half a foot tall—a paper trail that would scare off many doctors.

He perused every page, asking questions and making notes. Finally, he looked up. In his waiting room, I had completed an elaborate questionnaire designed to single out Lyme patients from a pool of patients with other illnesses that affect multiple biological systems.

It has since been empirically validated as a screening tool. Now Dr. But with potential adverse effects associated with antibiotics — disrupted gut flora, allergic reactions, and drug-resistant bacteria — doctors must be judicious when prescribing them, Wormser said. There is currently no vaccine against Lyme disease for humans, although there is one available for dogs. They withdrew it from the market in amid negative press coverage, poor sales, and lawsuits over short-term adverse reactions.

Lyme disease, if not initially treated with antibiotics, can cause facial palsy, severe headaches, swelling in large joints, shooting pains, and changes in heartbeat, much like the symptoms Spector experienced.

Up to 20 percent of Lyme disease cases can cause lasting symptoms, including arthritis in the joints, cognitive difficulties, chronic fatigue, and sleep disturbances, even after antibiotic treatment, according to the CDC. These include some people with no diagnosed history of Lyme disease. The best evidence to date suggests it may be an autoimmune response to the initial infection. Chronic Lyme disease has hit celebrities such as singer Shania Twain.

The ailment can cause muscle aches, mental fog, and fatigue for years or even…. That means a wide variety of health conditions may cause them.

There's no direct evidence that Lyme disease is contagious. However, some research suggests this may be worth a closer look. Lyme disease can go on to cause heart and other complications, but preventing tick bites and early treatment of infection can reduce those risks.