An Australian woman has been granted the right to have her recently deceased husband's body tested for a disease that health officials say doesn't exist in Australia–Lyme disease. The man became acutely disabled three years ago, after being bitten by a tick in bushland north of Sydney. Australian tests for Lyme were negative, though US tests were positive. When the man died last week, authorities initially refused his widow's request for an autopsy. A court injunction now allows her to proceed.

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From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Court grants Lyme disease autopsy

KATE BENSON HEALTH

July 20, 2010

A Sydney woman has been awarded a Supreme Court injunction to have her dead husband tested for a disease the Health Department says does not exist in Australia.

Mualla Akinci’s husband, Karl McManus, died last Wednesday – three years after he was bitten by a tick she says carried Lyme disease, a bacterial infection which, if left untreated, can cause profound neurological damage.

Mr McManus, 43, from Turramurra, was bitten on the left side of his chest during filming for the television show Home and Away in bushland in Waratah Park, northern Sydney. Within six weeks he lost mobility in one of the fingers on his left hand. That quickly spread to paralysis in his left arm and across to his right arm.

Mr McManus was diagnosed with multifocal neuropathy after testing negative for Lyme disease, but Ms Akinci, a pharmacist, insisted he be tested again at clinics in the US and Germany. Both tests returned positive for Lyme disease.

She argues that Australian tests are inadequate because pathologists looks for antibodies in the blood, rather than for proteins in specific bacteria within tissue.

”Lyme doesn’t usually live in the blood. It lives in tissues unless someone’s system is flushed with it so it stands to reason that every test will come back negative,” Ms Akinci said.

The Health Department maintains that no case has been transmitted in Australia and the organisms that cause it – three species of the genus borrelia – are not carried here by wildlife, livestock or their parasites.

Read the rest of the story here.

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