LYME DISEASE DEBATE

They’re known as the Lyme Wars. That’s the term that the New Yorker magazine has used to describe the fight by Lyme activists “who have for years argued that conventional medical definitions of the disease are inadequate.”

Much of the controversy arises from what has been called either posttreatment Lyme disease syndrome or chronic Lyme disease. Proponents say that the disease can persist for years, and they argue that long-term antibiotic therapy is the solution.

The New England Journal of Medi- cine has acknowledged that 10 to 20 per cent of patients treated with short-term antibiotics nonetheless continue to suffer from long-term symptoms even after the initial infection is cleared. But the journal concludes that “patients with subjective, vexing symptoms attributed to Lyme disease should not anticipate that even longer courses of antibiotics will produce relief.”

Christopher Labos, a Montreal cardiologist who has written extensively about Lyme disease, agrees.

“Lyme disease is real,” he said. “Many patients suffer from it. (But) the studies show that long-term antibiotics do not help. And there is reason to doubt the accuracy of some private U.S. labs, such that people may be told that they have Lyme disease when, in fact, they do not.”

For long-term sufferers, giving them antibiotics may make them vulnerable to contracting C. difficile colitis, he added. There’s also the possibility that someone who thinks he or she has chronic Lyme disease and is on long-term antibiotics might not realize that they could have developed another disease that goes undiagnosed.