NEWS: Situation update regarding IDSA Lyme guidelines
The Lyme community is rightly concerned about the IDSA’s current Lyme guidelines revision process.
Among other failings, the panel chosen by the IDSA lacks a range of viewpoints about Lyme disease. ILADS physicians have been excluded. Researchers with known biases against chronic Lyme treatment have been included. And the IDSA’s hand-picked “patient representative” admits she has no personal experience with Lyme disease and knows nothing about it.
The IDSA will accept “public comments” on its proposal through April 9. LymeDisease.org is working with several Lyme advocacy groups, including the LDA, to coordinate submissions from different organizations throughout the nation. We are also talking with the IDSA regarding patient comments and are preparing a survey to provide to give patients an opportunity to say what is important to them in the IDSA guidelines. We expect to be able to share further details of these actions with you as they develop further either Friday or Monday.
Stay tuned for details.
Read our previous posts here:
IDSA Guidelines Revision Process–Cause for Alarm?
IDSA Chooses Token Patient for Lyme Panel
The National Science Foundation has recently reported: Ebola, Dengue fever, Lyme disease: The growing economic cost of infectious diseases. http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=133576
For accurate and reliable Ebola test, a PCR fragment of 346 bp of viral cDNA was purified. Sequencing was performed with the use of the BigDye Terminator v1.1 Cycle Sequencing Kit. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25317743
So, please ask one question: Why the IDSA does not consider using a PCR fragment of borrelia for DNA sequencing to test for Lyme disease which is the equivalent of Ebola in the U.S.A. in economic cost?