I have been diagnosed with lyme using USA testing but I live in Alberta. Please, can someone give me the name of a medical physician that believes lyme exists and tries to treat it? I can't find anyone to help me and I am at my wits end. Thank you in advance.
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I interpreted this article the same way as you did, and if common ground can be reached somehow between ILADs and IDSA and bring about accurate testing, diagnosis and treatment, it sure would bring about a much needed change!
Quite interesting, indeed!
This article reads to me as trying carefully to reframe the current so-called 'mainstream' view of why those who are supposedly cured (after a few weeks of doxycycline) continue to have symptoms of Lyme.
The so-called 'mainstream' view held by the CDC and IDSA is that after the standard treatment for Lyme, any continuing symptoms are due to an over-active immune system reacting to a now-gone Lyme infection.
The contrary view, held by Lyme specialists/LLMDs, is that the Lyme bacteria run and hide in biofilms, slimy shields the bacteria create to sheild them from detection by the human immune system. Doxy and amoxicillin are effective very early in Lyme infections, before biofilms form, and in the view of LLMDs, once the Lyme bacteria create the biofilms, a somewhat different medication approach is required to break through the biofilms to reach and kill the Lyme bacteria.
The articles above is echoing the LLMDs' view in these sentences from above (my ***asterisks*** below are for emphasis):
"Frontline drugs such as doxycycline and amoxicillin kill the replicating spirochetal form of B. burgdorferi quite effectively, ***but they exhibit little activity against non-replicating persisters that are enriched in the stationary phase or in biofilm-like aggregates of B. burgdorferi.***
"Although some antibiotics have been tested for their activity against B. burgdorferi, the full spectrum of antibiotic susceptibility for B. burgdorferi has not been determined.
"In addition, there has been no study to systematically identify or assess drugs targeting B. burgdorferi persisters."
Yippee!! This sounds like progress -- and potential common ground for both sides of the dispute.
Thanks for posting this, kathlog!