Archive for the ‘Treatment’ Category

Reaching a Consensus in Lyme Disease – Contagion Live

  Approx. 10 Min

Reaching a Consensus in Lyme Disease

Panelists Peter L. Salgo, MD; Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA; Leonard Sigal, MD; Samuel Shor, MD, FACP; and Patricia V. Smith share their thoughts on what needs to happen before a consensus can be reached in Lyme disease.

Peter L. Salgo, MD: Moving to consensus: yes or no? The first step, if you’re going to make the diagnosis and treat it, is 2 to 4 weeks of antibiotics to kill the spirochete. Yes, no, what?

Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA: No.

Peter L. Salgo, MD: No. Bob, why not?

Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA: Well, I think I’ve seen some people for whom that works, but I think there’s always the outlier in the bell curve. There are some people where a few weeks do not work for some reason. Maybe they have a complex infection. There’s more than one pathogen.

Peter L. Salgo, MD: I said first step, would that be the first step for most people?

Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA: Yes, I think that would be.

Leonard Sigal, MD: That would depend on the manifestation though. If somebody comes to you with meningitis, you’re not going to give them 2 weeks of doxycycline.

Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA: No.

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: No, but you’re not going to give them more than 8 weeks probably.

Leonard Sigal, MD: But my point being is that it depends.

Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA: You’re right, it depends.

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: Yes.

Peter L. Salgo, MD: OK. Consensus or not—my guess is going to be no, by the way—what do we do for the subset of patients who continue to experience symptoms after this 2 to 4 to 6 weeks of antibiotics?

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: Careful differential diagnosis and careful empathetic review of their clinical picture.

Leonard Sigal, MD: And not telling them that it’s all in their head.

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: Right, and being supportive.

Leonard Sigal, MD: Absolutely.

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: With the recognition that there are going to be those of us who feel a greater percentage of patients probably have active infection as opposed to another group of people who do not, such that the recommendations coming out of that review is going to be different.

Leonard Sigal, MD: And to reiterate, looking for other potential explanations.

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: Differential diagnosis.

Leonard Sigal, MD: Absolutely.

Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA: And don’t just give antibiotics to treat the symptoms as well. We need to do both.

Peter L. Salgo, MD: Let’s boil it down. I’m trying to get at least some clarity, here, for the rationale for or against using a longer course of antibiotics in patients who have persistent symptoms.

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: If you feel that there is a threshold that you’ve achieved and that there is active infection—and we’ve all discussed what that means, and that threshold is different for individuals. If you feel that’s the case, then by not doing that, you potentially run the risk of not having adequate therapeutic gains. The other component—and this goes to the MS patients. A number of them, actually all 3 of them, were recommended by the neurologists to be on immune-suppressive drugs, which could have made their conditions worse had they not been identified as having an infection.

Peter L. Salgo, MD: Now, we’ve had an awful lot of bomb-throwing here today. There’s an awful lot of grenades flying through the air out there. What do we need to reach a better consensus on the issues that we’ve discussed?

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: Better testing.

Peter L. Salgo, MD: Better testing. What kind of testing are we looking for?

Leonard Sigal, MD: Let’s back up for a second. We need better science, looking at clinical markers, biomarkers as you were saying; looking at better testing; and looking at what the sensitive questions are that we can ask. I don’t mean sensitive in the sense of, “I’m caring for you,” that’s important, too, but sensitive in the sense of statistics. I think what we need to do is put down the grenades, put down the bombs, stop accusing each other of somehow having nefarious interest, and let’s have a civil conversation. I realize this is the United States in the year 2017, so the word civil has been thrown out the door. But maybe in this microcosm, we can be civil, have a conversation about this, and make the best of everybody’s talents and experiences.

Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA: One solution is having more programs like this. This is great. I think when it’s face-to-face and collegial, we can help to reconcile these differences and iron them out. We’re coming at it from very different angles.

Leonard Sigal, MD: Yes.

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: Right.

Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA: I think this is very useful and I think better disease definition is critical.

Patricia V. Smith: I was just going to say that, over the years, many times, we have asked to have more dialogue. We’ve contacted the IDSA, we’ve tried to sit down with them. We actually had them at our LDA Columbia CME Conference several years ago. It was the first time they were on the same stage. Believe it or not, we’ve advocated for that for decades, to get people together to have a discussion. But, unfortunately, there’s been unwillingness, and I was very happy that Dr. Sigal agreed to come in today and sit at the same table as us, because it doesn’t happen very often.

Leonard Sigal, MD: But it goes the other way around, you know. I’ve invited people.

Patricia V. Smith: Excuse me, but who?

Leonard Sigal, MD: I’ve invited clinicians in New Jersey, who see hundreds of patients with Lyme disease, to sit down with me to come up with research studies that would allow us to understand what’s going on in those people, understand how they respond to antibiotics, and understand what biomarkers might be useful. And the last time I saw them was when they walked out the door. They didn’t follow through on their interest.

Patricia V. Smith: The reason for that may be because, for a number of decades, our physicians have been gone after by medical boards just for treatment, long-term, of patients with Lyme disease. That has been very problematic, and we have a number of physicians who have had sanctions and so on, so a climate of fear has existed. If they’re really the practicing physicians, they don’t want to put themselves out there, because they are brought up on charges.

Leonard Sigal, MD: Well, I’m not sure that’s the explanation. The BME, the Board of Medical Examiners in the state of New Jersey, has looked at many, many clinicians.

Patricia V. Smith: I know what they look at.

Leonard Sigal, MD: Yes, you know, unfortunately. But what I was asking was, “If you see these patients, let’s do a clinical study so we can understand what’s going on with these patients,” and they were never forthcoming. All I can do is invite and, in a civil manner, try to encourage them to be part of a scientific trial.

Patricia V. Smith: I think part of the problem is also that when there have been clinical trials—and sometimes the treating physicians have supported those trials, and they have said to patients, “Maybe you should enter those trials”—those trials always end up that the patients are basically not being helped by antibiotics. Again, broad brush conclusions. And so, those physicians and those patients don’t want to even participate in those trials.

Peter L. Salgo, MD: Let me see if I understand that point. There are trials that are undergoing, that are underway, and patients get enrolled in these trials, but the results are that antibiotics may not be the right answer. They didn’t give you the answer you wanted. Does that mean that the trial was bad?

Patricia V. Smith: No, that isn’t the situation. The conclusions that were drawn in some of these studies, in the 4 from the NIH—and Sam alluded to 2 of them before—were broad brush. It should have said that in this subset of patients who were in this trial, with these particular antibiotics for this duration of therapy, the antibiotics maybe did not help them—or in 2 cases antibiotics actually did, but they said that they didn’t. So, that is the broad brush.

Leonard Sigal, MD: One of the criticisms that I’ve heard of the “long-term” antibiotic trials is that the duration was insufficient, and had there been a longer trial of antibiotics, there might have been a better outcome. I’ve heard this from other people. I’m not putting words in your mouth, Sam. I just want to ask you about it.

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: And that is a potential, but there are other confounding variables, such as in the Klempner study. Most people were sick for between 4-and-a-half and 5-and-a-half years, many of whom had gone through the very protocols that were used in the study, so you’re self-selecting failure. And it’s also a matter of not identifying treatment of co-infections.

Leonard Sigal, MD: See, you’re taking issue with the design of the study.

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: Yes.

Leonard Sigal, MD: Had the study been a little bit more real-world oriented…

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: Right. The problem is that you’ve got to control your variables, and there are so many variables that you’ve got to control.

Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA: And PCR-positive patients were excluded from the study. They should have been the ones that were studied.

Leonard Sigal, MD: I agree with you.

Peter L. Salgo, MD: It sounds to me—not being involved in the creation of these studies, not being at the table—that if everybody got together and agreed a priori on the construction of the study and the goals and endpoints, everybody might agree better when they got the data.

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: We’re in the process of actually doing that. There’s a work group of about 15 of us who are trying to put that together.

Leonard Sigal, MD: If I can be of assistance, let me know.

Peter L. Salgo, MD: I just want to point out, I haven’t seen this since the United Nations was formed.

Leonard Sigal, MD: In the pharmaceutical industry.

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: Both schools of thought are involved.

Leonard Sigal, MD: In the pharmaceutical industry—and that’s not a dirty word—when you have a study of say a drug for rheumatoid arthritis, you have to come up with entry criteria that bring in patients who are as homogenous as possible, because you’re going to be randomizing them. If you randomize them and they’re not homogenous, you stand a chance of asymmetric distribution of patients and your study goes up in smoke.

Samuel Shor, MD, FACP: Right.

Leonard Sigal, MD: I’m not defending anybody’s study design, by the way. I’m just saying that when you do a study, you have to be really rigorous about bringing in as homogenous a population as possible. Now, for some reason, they decided to exclude PCR-positive patients. I don’t know what the reasoning was there. But the idea is to not make the entry criteria so small that you can’t get the real world in, but not so broad as to make it a garbage study. There has got to be some middle ground.

Category:

Activism, Lyme, research, Treatment

MS Cure?

Photo Credit: UK Business Weekly

https://www.healthnutnews.com/this-scientist-is-on-the-verge-of-curing-multiple-sclerosis-for-2-3-million-patients/  by Erin Elizabeth, Health Nut News, Aug. 31, 2017

Multiple sclerosis is a terrible and debilitating disease where the body’s immune system is directed against the central nervous system. When that happens, according to the National MS Society:1

  • Within the CNS, the immune system attacks myelin — the fatty substance that surrounds and insulates the nerve fibers — as well as the nerve fibers themselves.
  • The damaged myelin forms scar tissue (sclerosis), which gives the disease its name.
  • When any part of the myelin sheath or nerve fiber is damaged or destroyed, nerve impulses traveling to and from the brain and spinal cord are distorted or interrupted, producing a wide variety of symptoms.

Currently, there is no cure. Medication can often help make symptoms like double vision, blindness, as well as psychological or muscle issues more bearable but ultimately it robs people of their lives and shortens life expectancies. But that may all be changing.

Dr. Su Metcalfe believes that the attack on the nerve cells can be stopped thanks to a new medical development her company LIFNano has created. 2

She said in an interview:

“Some people get progressive MS, so go straight to the severe form of the disease, but the majority have a relapsing or remitting version.

It can start from the age of 30, and there’s no cure, so all you can do is suppress the immune response, but the drugs that do that have side effects, and you can’t repair the brain. The cost of those drugs is very high, and in the UK there are a lot of people who don’t get treated at all.” 3

Using the stem cell particle LIF, which is a part of the immune cell and is able to control and confine the attack on our bodies, she found a “small binary switch” which is able to regulate itself INSIDE the immune cell to NOT attack our body. However, it can attack when it needs to.

She went on to say,

“That LIF, in addition to regulating and protecting us against attack, also plays a major role in keeping the brain and spinal cord healthy. In fact it plays a major role in tissue repair generally, turning on stem cells that are naturally occurring in the body, making it a natural regenerative medicine, but also plays a big part in repairing the brain when it’s been damaged.” 4

Much more research needs to be done but this breakthrough seems quite promising and the team has set their sights on having found the cure by 2020.

Dr. Metcalfe also believes she and her team might be able to tackle dementia as well because LIF is a “major health factor for the brain.”5 Therefore, if they can get into the brain and protect it, it serves that they could prevent dementia.

**Comment**

This is indeed great news for Lyme/MSIDS patients due to the fact many with MS, dementia, and Alzheimer’s are initially misdiagnosed with those labels but are actually infected and vice versa.  All in all, many autoimmune diseases will potentially benefit from this treatment.

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/06/26/important-example-of-iv-antibiotics-for-lymemsids/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/04/10/bugs-causing-alzheimers/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/01/04/aluminum-alzheimers-ld/

Iowan, Jack Gordon, is a case discovery of 2 diseases NEVER found together before on 11.22.2015: Lewy Body Dementia, causing violent hallucinations, and Lyme Disease/MSIDS. Using his medical files, he was bitten by a tick 35 yrs. ago, but the doctors never acknowledged it by diagnosing or treating him.

You may recognize Lewy Body Dementia as what Robin Williams’ autopsy revealed:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/did-robin-williams-have-lyme/
https://jneuroinflammation.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-2094-8-90
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3551238/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4399390/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/controversial-new-push-to-tie-microbes-to-alzheimer-s-disease/

 

Category:

Activism, Alzheimer's, research, Treatment

When Lyme Isn’t Caught Early

https://www.lymedisease.org/touchedbylyme-treat-early/

TOUCHED BY LYME: When Lyme disease isn’t caught early

The question was posed on one of LymeDisease.org’s Yahoo discussion groups. A mother had found a bull’s-eye rash on her 5-year-old son. She took him to urgent care and was given two weeks’ worth of antibiotics. Is that enough, she wondered, or should she pursue something more?

The following remarkably detailed response was posted by another mother on the group. I feel there are many lessons to be learned from her hard-earned wisdom. With her permission, I share it with you here. In the interest of protecting her family’s privacy, she prefers to remain anonymous.

These comments represent my point of view as the parent of a daughter who has been fighting Lyme disease and associated infections for over 12 years now. I am just a mom, not a medical expert. My comments are based upon our journey and what I have read and observed and what has happened to us and to others we know. They are not a substitute for knowledgeable medical help and advice.

I do not want to scare you, but it has been my experience that people unfamiliar with Lyme disease tend to under-respect the damage it can do and I don’t want that to happen in your son’s case. I feel with Lyme it is better to be safe than sorry. And time is of the essence.

The damage that can be done by undiagnosed, untreated, or undertreated Lyme can be life-changing. In the early days of Lyme disease, it was discovered that by treating for FOUR weeks initially, the chances of a relapse later were greatly minimized. This is because Lyme has a four-week growth cycle and you do better treating for the entire length of the cycle.

The group that discovered this lost out politically and we are left with the modern conventional medicine treatment of two weeks. This creates the possibility of the disease recurring later in some people. As Lyme can be very difficult to diagnose and symptoms can come on slowly over a long period of time, it is possible to get very sick from a relapse before becoming aware of what exactly is going on. ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society) doctors know this and treat for longer periods of time than conventional medical doctors.

I do not know what antibiotic your son is on, but our ILADS doctor says he normally uses doxycycline because it does well against Lyme and also does well against the most common other infections often contracted at the same time as Lyme. Ticks carry multiple infections and many patients have other infections in addition to Lyme, some of which are just as disabling and difficult to treat as Lyme. A bull’s-eye rash of any size is still considered evidence of exposure to Lyme disease. Some people with such a rash will never feel sick; their immune system will handle the infection. Others will get very ill right away. Others will become ill years later. No way to know which. Many people never see a rash and still get Lyme disease.

I suggest finding an ILADS-affiliated doctor who will make sure your son has optimum initial treatment. This offers the best possibility that this rash will not turn into illness later on. This practitioner can also tell you what to watch out for in the future that could indicate emerging Lyme, so that it can be treated early if it shows up. This doctor needs to be seen immediately. Within a week after exposure, Lyme bacteria can move into the central nervous system and become much harder to eradicate with treatment.

My daughter is only one of many examples of undiagnosed/untreated Lyme disease in a child. Her first symptoms were at eight years old; a horrific headache that lasted three months, along with some fatigue and low-level fever and viral symptoms. It looked like a sinus infection and after three rounds of various antibiotics, it slowly limped away and we were so glad that was over, whatever it was. We never saw a tick, never saw a bull’s-eye rash.

At 10, my daughter started having periodic episodes with bad headache, low-level fever, viral symptoms and fatigue.In between these, she was perfectly fine for weeks at a time. Not enough to get her pediatrician interested, but she was missing enough school and sports activities that it was starting to be a life issue. She also seemed to heal very slowly from injuries such as bruises and muscle pulls and strains. And though she hid it well and no one noticed at the time, she was dealing with some emotional and psychiatric issues.

At 12, she was a high-achieving scholar at an aggressive private school and excelling in all sports and thriving. She had an unlimited future. Until January 5, 2005, when she fell very ill with an apparent relapse of a stomach bug and never recovered.Huge headache, extreme fatigue, low-grade fever and lots of vomiting—for weeks and then months—while no one could figure out what was wrong. It took a year for the Lyme diagnosis and another two years after that for her first positive Lyme test – Lyme DNA found in her urine AFTER 1 year of expensive intravenous Lyme meds that we paid for out of pocket. And then another positive DNA test after six months more of intravenous Lyme meds.

She is almost 25 now. Her formal schooling consisted of completing sixth grade and four years of high school English with a home-school co-op. She is intelligent, but has major cognitive processing issues and her brain tires easily. She cannot attend school or work.  Though still fatigued, she can can occasionally bike, get in the pool with her cousins, or go to a restaurant.  These are huge for her; she spent the first few years of her illness on the couch in utter misery barely able to carry a simple conversation. This is much better, though not what any of us hoped for.

Her various infections, including Lyme, have caused an autoimmune disease that causes her brain to attack her dopamine receptors. This has caused horrific OCD symptoms which would have caused her to end her life had we not found great relief with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) treatments ($15K list price for meds for one treatment; she does a treatment each month, thankfully covered by my husband’s insurance). I left my engineering career to care for her in 2006, and I am still a major source of support for her.

We have spent several hundred thousand dollars out of our own pockets to try to get my daughter well. Our insurance company has spent more than that. Things get slowly better, but she is still not self-supporting and we have concern for her future. We are very fortunate – most people cannot afford the amount of treatment we have been able to give our daughter.

My daughter’s story is not the worst-case scenario. She now has a positive quality of life after years of that not being the case. Some people never get that far. This is what CAN happen if Lyme disease is not aggressively treated at the very beginning.

Everyone reacts to Lyme differently. Some people, even though extremely sick, respond well to standard ILADS treatment and soon put the disease behind them forever. Some people, like my daughter, just can’t clear it even after years of treatment. This is why I encourage you not to roll the dice with your son.See an ILADS doctor who will treat more aggressively and for longer than your regular physician. You may have to pay out of your own pocket. I think it is a good investment. I encourage you to educate yourself about this disease and the controversy over treatment guidelines.

Even if you treat aggressively now, you want to be aware of what to look for should Lyme show up later on. Based upon my reading and people I have known, common symptoms of slowly-emerging or re-emerging Lyme are joint pain that may move around and come and go, injuries that don’t heal well or quickly, digestive issues, fatigue, and emerging neurological symptoms that start to get scary.

Lyme tests so far are not reliable. A Johns Hopkins study in 2005 found that only 45% of patients who were later found to have  laboratory evidence of Lyme disease were positively diagnosed by the standard two-tier test done by conventional medical doctors (ELISA followed by a Western Blot if ELISA is positive). Do not trust a Lyme test to rule out Lyme disease.

You may feel foolish going to the trouble of finding an ILADS doctor.  Yet, I believe it is the best thing you can do to protect your son against trouble. Be sure to let the person you speak with at the doctor’s office know you have a child with a bull’s-eye rash from a few days ago. They should see you immediately. If not, get a different doctor. Lyme can move into the central nervous system within the first week after exposure. Then it is much harder to eradicate and chances of relapse increase. Some doctors offer “recent tick bite” appointments for just this sort of thing.

Wishing you and your son all the best,

A mom who has been there

***

TOUCHED BY LYME is written by Dorothy Kupcha Leland, LymeDisease.org’s VP for Education and Outreach. She is co-author of When Your Child Has Lyme Disease: A Parent’s Survival Guide. Contact her at dleland@lymedisease.org .

**Comment**

Amen and Amen!  Do NOT mess around with this.  Hit it hard and hit it early.

 

For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/08/12/lyme-disease-case-started-with-headaches/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/08/13/diagnosed-with-hiv-14-year-old-really-had-lyme/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/08/13/support-group-for-parents-of-children-with-lyme/

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Psychological Aspects, Treatment

Microbiologist Holly Ahern on Lyme Disease: How Did We Get Here?

   Aug. 30, 2017 – Approx. 31 Min

Microbiologist Holly Ahern Speaks at Focus on Lyme 2017

https://www.lymedisease.org/ahern-focus-on-lyme/?utm_source=sept+2&utm_campaign=re-send+aug+26–heart&utm_medium=email

Professor Holly Ahern, of State University of New York Adirondack, has extensive teaching and research experience in bacteriology and molecular biology. She’s the author of nationally published textbooks on microbiology, cell biology, and molecular biology. She’s also an expert on the scientific literature pertaining to Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections.

Professor Ahern came to her Lyme expertise the hard way, as the mother of a daughter with Lyme disease. Her professional knowledge was put to the practical test of having to navigate the complex care of a Lyme patient. She understands the science and has complete empathy for the suffering that tick-borne diseases inflict on patients and families.

Earlier this year, she gave an illuminating presentation at the Focus on Lyme Scientific Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Addressing the historical events that have contributed to the Lyme disease epidemic in the US, she reminds the audience of something they know too well— “we are not in a good place when it comes to Lyme disease.” Then, she answers the question: how did we get here?

Ahern clearly lays out the “alternative conclusions” that over past decades have perpetuated the idea that Lyme disease is “hard to catch and easy treat.” That misconception continues to be encouraged by the CDC and IDSA today.

She points out that, in fact:

  1. Lyme is easy to catch: “Lyme disease is the second most common infectious disease in the United States.”

  2. Testing for Lyme is highly inaccurate: “The recommended serological assays for Lyme disease are falsely negative more than half the time.”

  3. Lyme infection can be chronic: “There are hundreds of peer-reviewed studies that show the relationship between bacterial infection and chronic disease, not just Lyme disease.”

  4. Antibiotics do treat infection: “Of the clinical trials done to date, not one of them provides conclusive scientific evidence to prove antibiotics show no benefit to patients with chronic symptoms.”

Ahern reviews the epidemiology used in the discovery of Lyme disease and the science from the original studies of 40 years ago demonstrating the following facts:

  1. Only 1 in 4 patients with Lyme will develop the bull’s-eye rash.
  2. Only 50% of patients with Lyme will develop the antibodies needed for a positive test.
  3. Only 50% of patients with Lyme will test positive using the CDC “gold standard” two-tier test.
  4. Only 50% of patients treated with two weeks of antibiotics will get better.

Ahern uses humor and wit to describe the current scientific data which refutes the notion that patients with persistent symptoms from Lyme disease are not helped with longer term antibiotics.

More on Ahern:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/21/busting-lyme-myths-nyc/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/06/23/no-bias-in-mmwr-for-any-other-infectious-disease-requiring-iv-antibiotics-except-for-lyme/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/04/14/transmission-time-for-lymemsids-infection/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/03/03/microbiologist-on-lyme-ninja-radio/

 

Category:

Activism, Lyme, research, Testing, Treatment

Lyme Disease and Long-Term Antibiotics – Contagion Live

 Approx. 9.5 min

Lyme Disease and Long-Term Antibiotics: Help or Harm?

Panelists Samuel Shor, MD, FACP; Leonard Sigal, MD; Peter L. Salgo, MD; Patricia V. Smith; and Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA, debate the existence of chronic Lyme disease and the use of longer-term antibiotics, and explore the impact a lack of consensus has on patients, providers, and the health care system.

For more on how science is stacked against Lyme/MSIDS patients and the medical practitioners who treat them:

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/08/29/research-challenges-in-lyme-disease-contagion-live/
What is hilarious, if not maddening, is Sigal’s incredulous disbelief in a “conspiracy.” This is the same man that is an active player and appears in journalist, Pam Weintraub’s book, Cure Unknown Inside the Lyme Epidemic. (Excellent book)

  • On page 12, “Skeptical of chronic Lyme disease as an explanation of ongoing symptoms, Sigal often diagnosed such patients as having fibromyalgia, a pain syndrome, instead.”
  • Page 271, “The New York Times quote of the day was from Leonard Sigal” ‘Lyme disease, although a problem, is not nearly as big a problem as most people think. The bigger epidemic is Lyme anxiety.‘”
  • Page 306, “Leonard Sigal, for instance, consulted for Prudential, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Anthem, and Metropolitan Life, passing diagnostic and treatment decrees. His fee was $560 an hour in 1996, though he worked for a day rate as well. Sigal was not alone: Other top academics consulted too. The consultancy fees would ‘pay for a lot of college tuition, actually, ‘ Sigal had quipped under oath, when testifying against a patient’s diagnosis of Lyme.”
  • Page 316, “It didn’t take long for two competing pharmaceutical giants – SmithKline Beecham and Pasteur Merieux Connaught – to launch two potential products. The Connaught effort, (creation of the Osp A vaccine) with the clinical trial headed by Leonard Sigal, was killed by the company in the wake of lawsuits over side effects.” https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/01/pbs-lyme-vaccine/ “LYMERIX vaccine caused 640 emergency room visits, 34 life threatening reactions, 77 hospitalizations, 198 disabilities, and 6 deaths.”
  • Page 366, “Of particular concern are the publications, more prominent in recent months, suggesting that uncured patients are not really sick with Lyme disease, but with a strange psychiatric malaise. ‘Psychiatric comorbidity and other psychological factors distinguishing (chronic Lyme Disease) patients from other patients commonly seen in Lyme disease referral centers, and were related to poor functional outcomes,’ Leonard Sigal wrote in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism in 2008.”

In sum, Sigal is a doctor who is extremely skeptical of chronic Lyme who obtains hefty fees for consulting against patients, who was actively creating pharmaceutical products relating to Lyme at the same time, and who brazenly states many Lyme patients are not only anxious but psycho to boot.

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/01/13/lyme-science-owned-by-good-ol-boys/  Sin Lee, a pathologist and scientist who directs Milford Molecular Diagnostics, is speaking out about it as he has received numerous publication rejections when he attempted to rebut the oft repeated dogma that has ruled the medical world for decades regarding tick borne illness.

Christian Perronne, physician on the infectious diseases faculty at the University of Versailles-St Quentin, France, states, “If you try to publish a little bit different from the guidelines, it’s anti-science.” And, Lyme literate physician Raphael Stricker goes on record, “The primer propagates one of the biggest myths about Lyme disease diagnosis instead of acknowledging the dreadful state of 30-year-old Lyme serology and the need for better testing.”

Benjamin Luft, one of the physicians who wrote the original Lyme guidelines in 2000 admitted that he now agrees that Lyme disease can persist making it infinitely more difficult to treat as time progresses and that the cabal’s continual emphasis on “false positives” is a red herring – that early treatment has great benefit.
And lastly, Pffeifer spoke with Raymond Dattwyler, a 1994 CDC panelist that helped write the LD guidelines, who stated, “Twenty years ago I would’ve said they’re fine. Now I say, oh shit, we were wrong. It doesn’t look as good as we thought it was.”

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/01/28/sit-down-science/   Industry funded “science” has tainted our world and turned science-based evidence into science-biased propaganda. Universities are laundering money through foundations to intentionally hide relationships, while scientists secretly nurture their relationships with corporate executives.  Negative outcomes go unpublished, the peer review process is so weak only studies that challenge industry interests are heavily scrutinized (usually by scientists hired by corporate public relations firms). Media is paid handsomely to ensure the public that “the science is settled,” especially when corporate liability is a primary concern.

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/01/02/fake-science/  James Lyons Weiler presents how publication bias is impacting patient care in dramatic ways. 

So yes, Mr. Sigal, things are topsy turvy in Lyme Land and you are a part of the problem.

 

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Activism, Lyme, Treatment