March 1, 2018 – Post-treatment Lyme

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Anchor lead: How can post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome be recognized? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Lyme disease sometimes fails to respond to treatment, and may result in a constellation of symptoms that, taken together with the presence of the characteristic rash at some point in the past, points to a diagnosis of post treatment Lyme disease syndrome. That’s according to research by John Aucott, a Lyme expert at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues.

Aucott: They continue to have symptoms that can be quite disabling including fatigue, cognitive complaints, musculoskeletal pain, sleep disruptions, and an onset after the treatment of their Lyme disease and when we see them their symptoms have often been going on for months or years. We showed in the study that they were quite disabling, they had an impact on their function and their healthcare related quality of life. Are these patients different? We showed they are different, their fatigue is much higher levels of severity, their pain is much higher levels of severity than people without Lyme disease, because we had a control group to compare them.   :33

Aucott says further research will hopefully identify ways to manage the syndrome. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.