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New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

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Re: New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

#91

Post by anitil »

soulofmischief wrote: post #65
The5thElephant wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why have I heard so many stories of doctors not wanting to diagnose something as Lyme disease?

I literally used to get laughed out of the clinic, told I was a healthy young male and just needed to exercise more. After a decade of this, I was finally diagnosed with gout, something doctors had just been lying about testing for. No one could believe someone could have gout in their 20s (It's been developing since my late teens and I've generally had arthritis my entire life, since I was a child). It took a physic…

I have seen young men get diagnosed with gout, but they were Islanders (Samoans and Maori in my case), who I believe are at a higher risk so doctors are more aware of it

Re: New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

#92

Post by newyankee »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #71
The5thElephant wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why have I heard so many stories of doctors not wanting to diagnose something as Lyme disease?

Doctors are trained to be arrogant, dismissive of unknown unknowns, and with a terrible understanding of statistics. Add to that: - They have a lot of patients and not enough sleep. - They need to pay back a huge student loan. - They hold terrible responsibilities and risk being sued. - They don't have much time for themselves, let alone update their knowledge. - Most patients are overreacting idiots, so it's a winni…

Makes you question, how bad could an all encompassing AI be at diagnosing given enough multimodal data

Re: New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

#93

Post by thedougd »

Aurornis wrote: post #38
charlangas wrote: post #36

Both of my sisters (currently mid-30s) have had their lives on pause for over 10 years due to chronic Lyme disease because doctors in Mexico hadn't ever even heard of it. It took 4 years of pain for the first of them to be diagnosed. Not sure when, if ever, they'll be cured because when you don't treat Lyme disease within a few months of infection, it digs in and is incredibly difficult to kill.

> Not sure when, if ever, they'll be cured because when you don't treat Lyme disease within a few months of infection, it digs in and is incredibly difficult to kill FYI, the idea that active infection continues to exist in hiding within the body is a fringe theory. The linked article talks about one of the current theories for why some patients have persistent symptoms after the infection is treated. The theory invo…

Yes, and they use non-specific testing that will produce a positive result in most people.

There's a massive scam industry around Lyme and it's a shame because it interferes with legitimate suffers' ability to get honest treatment. Or worse, sends those who don't have Lyme down a rabbit hole where their actual condition is never treated.

Re: New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

#94

Post by Quinner »

boplicity wrote: post #61

How strange that scientific research just like this has become extremely political. Case in point: The Trump administration has cut Northwestern off from over a quarter billion dollars in funding because of "anti-semitism." Note, that the vast majority of this money is for research just like the one linked in this article. Of course, people seem to be arguing about anti-semitism more than cutting off funding for rese…

Yet the people that were apoplectic about Facebook voluntarily working with the government to combat covid misinformation are mysteriously silent.

Re: New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

#95

Post by zzzeek »

bluGill wrote: post #8
giantg2 wrote: post #5

I thought that there are approved human vaccines, but they were voluntarily removed due to economic reasons and lack of adoption.

There was, withdrawn in 2002. Protection wanes so even if you were one of the few who got it then you have no protection today. There are a couple new vaccines in the works, one in phase 3 testing so hopefully we get something in a few years.

the current FDA has no chance of allowing novel new vaccines to move forward

Re: New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

#96

Post by netaustin »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #40
netaustin wrote: post #21

I contracted Lyme disease while on vacation in Cape Cod last year. The first symptom was left-side facial paralysis, which my physician diagnosed as Bell's Palsy, so I spent two weeks on steroids before we figured out the real issue. Three weeks of doxycycline cured the Lyme but left feeling pretty wrecked for more than a month afterwards! I seem to have avoided the chronic symptoms some people experience, but a low-…

Just to be pedantic, Bell's Palsy is the name of the condition not the cause. So it was Bell's Palsy caused by Lyme disease. I have noticed that the line between condition and cause is often overlooked, even by doctors. For example this leads to people thinking Pinkeye/conjunctivitis is highly contagious, when it is still conjunctivitis if it is caused by getting something in your eye. I think that holds for everythi…

Not a tangent! I certainly appreciate the semantics, and there seems to be some academic interest in the semantics alone! Some Lyme researchers would like to call it “Lyme Disease Facial Palsy” or LDFP to encourage practitioners to differentiate early. Not sure that would’ve helped me, I had no bullseye rash and no fever, just horrible fatigue and facial paralysis. The idea would be to encourage practitioners in Lyme-prone locations to see Bell’s, test for Lyme, which I think your point about overlooking the link between condition and the cause supports. Lyme showed up on a blood test my PCP ordered only after I completed a course of prednisone with no improvement and much misery. He didn’t even tell me he added a Lyme test, but I’m glad he did!

Here’s one paper on the topic I remember reading at the time: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8791801/

Re: New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

#97

Post by netaustin »

brady8 wrote: post #81
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be pedantic, Bell's Palsy is the name of the condition not the cause. So it was Bell's Palsy caused by Lyme disease. I have noticed that the line between condition and cause is often overlooked, even by doctors. For example this leads to people thinking Pinkeye/conjunctivitis is highly contagious, when it is still conjunctivitis if it is caused by getting something in your eye. I think that holds for everythi…

Much of being a physician is pattern recognition - the vast majority of Bell's Palsy is idiopathic (generally viral), and thus that's how we usually treat it. If we tested everybody for everything everytime the health system(s) would collapse. It definitely helps as a patient to advocate, and add anything that a physician like myself maybe wouldn't always ask, like if you've been a tick-infested area and/or discovere…

Yeah I agree that’s what happened to me. Alas, no tick, no rash, and I’m not sure my PCP in New York City sees a ton of Lyme. Still, I’m glad he caught it when he did!

Re: New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

#98

Post by Loughla »

chasil wrote: post #80

"...doxycycline (and other generic antibiotics) wreak havoc on the microbiome, killing beneficial bacteria in the gut and causing troubling side effects..." Doxycycline is used as prophylaxis for a wide variety of pathogens; either the risk is tolerable with them, or the alarm is needlessly elevated. https://www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk/advice/malaria/doxycycline

Troubling side effects, from my experience being treated for Lyme with doxy is diarrhea for a while.

I'll fucking take that all day long to get rid of Lyme. It sucks out loud. Every one of my joints was killing me. Even the useless little joints in my pinky toe.

Re: New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

#99

Post by seattle_spring »

jpadkins wrote: post #58

Good time to remind people that right next to the town of Lyme CT is Plum Island Animal Disease Center, who happened to be researching tick based disease transmission when Lyme disease was first discovered (named after the town that had the first case). Crazy coincidence. https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2019/07/did-us-invent-lym...

Not really. Isn't the best place to open a center that "researches tick based disease transmission" somewhere that's close proximity to a hot-spot for ticks that transmit diseases?

Re: New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

#100

Post by Loughla »

heelix wrote: post #69

Our kid got bit by a tick. Was lucky enough that it had the bulls eye pattern and was able to look it up. She got a crazy high temperature. Was crazy. A strong antibiotic cleared it up. I really wish there still was a vaccine available (for humans). I treat my pant legs and jacket sleeves with permethrin, which slowly kills the ticks - but does so usually before they would attempt to bite. One of the better camping t…

Duct tape inside out at the top of your socks under your pants does wonders as well. We couldn't find permethrin during COVID, so we did that. It worked mostly. The big bastards didn't get stuck, but they're easy to see. It was the little deer and seed ticks that got stuck. So that's a win.
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