Use of Final TBDWG Reports In Publications
Use of Final TBDWG Reports In Publications
Results from the 1st federal TBDWG report (2018) are being used in a new published studies and articles to make a point!
AND, so far they are points that work FOR us and those in other countries (study from Connecticut and Ireland & another article from France)!
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 May 20;16(10). pii: E1779. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16101779.
Lee SH1, Healy JE2, Lambert JS3,4.
1 Milford Molecular Diagnostics, Milford, CT 06460, USA. shlee01@snet.net.
2 School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University College Cork, T23 N73K Cork, Ireland. e.healy@cs.ucc.ie.
3 Department of medicine, University College Dublin, D04 V1W8 Dublin, Ireland. jlambert@mater.ie.
4 Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, D07 R2WY Dublin, Ireland. jlambert@mater.ie.
QUOTE- "The poor diagnostic accuracy of serological tests early in the infection process has been noted most recently in the 2018 Report to Congress issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Tick-Borne Disease Working Group.”
QUOTE- "We recommend that hospital laboratories located in Lyme disease endemic areas begin to use a "core genome" sequencing test to routinely diagnose spirochetemia caused by various species of borreliae for timely management of patients at the early stage of infection."
Link Here
(Article in French- Translated By Google)
TRIBUNE. The scientific controversy is growing around tick-borne diseases. Two doctors respond to an editorial of Public Health France.
By Professor Christian Perronne * and Dr. Alexis Lacout **
Posted on 13/05/2019 at 18:54 | The Point.fr
In an editorial published in the Weekly Epidemiological Bulletin of May 3, 2019, "A necessary ethical questioning", Professor Jean-Claude Desenclos, Scientific Director, Deputy Director General of Public Health France, took sides, without scientific support, against the existence of a chronic form of Lyme disease.
This rapidly growing disease is caused by a bacterium called Borrelia, which is transmitted by tick bite. However, this chronic form of the disease is responsible for the suffering of a large number of patients who are overwhelmingly rejected by the health system, or even sent to psychiatry.
Voices from doctors and researchers have come to regret a partisan text and shed light on many scientific publications belied the content of this editorial (see the statement of the French Federation against tick-borne diseases).
Serological tests are unreliable
Professor Desenclos supports the thesis that diagnostic tests for Lyme disease, based on serology (search for antibodies in the blood), are reliable, while many scientific studies show totally the opposite. Many results are mostly false negative, leaving patients without diagnosis or with misdiagnosis.
It is incomprehensible for us doctors to observe that there is still a debate on this subject. It's a scientific aberration. It results in millions of patients worldwide, undiagnosed, in total medical wandering.
An exhaustive analysis of all the published data on the subject, carried out by two British researchers, Cook and Puri, published at the end of 2016 (Cook and Puri Int J Gen Med 2016) has nevertheless demonstrated that the detection capacity of the serology is less than 60 %.
Another article published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology (Lacout et al., Value of Patient Population Selection and Lyme Borreliosis Tests) shows, as already pointed out in a report of the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC), published in April 2016, it is not possible to correctly calibrate serologies for Lyme disease.
Indeed, to properly calibrate the tests, one must be able to determine a diseased population and a non-diseased population. Now, the whole problem with this disease is to determine the sick population.
All these limits were taken into account in June 2018 by the High Authority of Health (HAS).
The report of the US Department of Health and Human Services (US Department of Health and Human Services) official working group to the United States Congress on November 14, 2018 fully confirms that current diagnostic tests are not reliable, that infections associated with Lyme disease - co-infections due to other pathogens transmitted during tick bites - are not sought after.
The US report also confirms that the treatments have not been properly evaluated. It is only in the microcosm of the irreducible Gauls of the Society of infectious pathology of French language (SPILF) that one observes such a resistance to these scientific truths.
Even Professor Benoît Jaulhac, director of the National Center for Reference (CNR) of borreliosis of Strasbourg, who defends the reliability of tests for a long time, ends up recognizing in a published article that no biological diagnostic test is perfect (Values of diagnosis tests for the various species of spirochetes Med Med Infect 2019)!
It is shocking to observe the collusion of a state agency, Santé Publique France, with a learned society, SPILF, to peddle inappropriate theories, especially with other learned societies, not specialists in the field. The CNR borreliosis of Strasbourg is selected, evaluated and partially funded by Public Health France.
This agency is thus the supervisory body of the CNR, which is in a monopoly position to evaluate diagnostic tests for Lyme borreliosis based on serology. A powerful CNR to rule out the development of any new test, when we know that the National Agency for Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) is obliged to take into account the opinion of the CNR to approve or not a new test.
A scientific article tainted with errors
In his editorial, Professor Desenclos quotes the article "Lyme disease: 80% of misdiagnosis" led by Professor Eric Caumes. Unfortunately, this article is not a scientific study worthy of the name, but an inventory of practices of rejection that irreparably face patients with chronic Lyme disease and co-infections every day.
This shocking behavior towards patients, often in great suffering, is common to most infectious diseases departments. This publication, taken by Public Health France is tainted by many errors that we raised in a validated response and published in the journal "Clinical Infectious Diseases", the same who published the defective article. (Lacout A, Perronne C. Holistic or Dedicated Approach in Lyme Disease? Clin Infect Dis. 2018).
It is incomprehensible that a statement of biases without any solid scientific support could have been published in an apparently respectable international newspaper.
But this journal belongs to the Infectious Diseases Society of America, American scholarly society that has always, without bringing any scientific proof, denied the existence of the chronic form of Lyme disease ... The fact that its press organ has validated this unscientific publication only highlights the collusion in misinformation.
However, given the clarity of our response, denouncing the great weakness of the publication of Professor Caumes, said newspaper had no choice but to publish our response. In this article, we are not only shocked to see the authors claim that we do not have Lyme disease if the serology is negative, but as a bonus, we must remember the tick bite to develop disease. It's ubiquitous!
It is well established in medical literature that the majority of patients do not remember being bitten by a tick. The sting is painless, often located in not very visible places (folds of the body, back, scalp, auditory canal, etc.). "Baby ticks" (larvae or nymphs) are only two to three millimeters in size, the size of a pinhead!
The authors point the point by saying that if patients are not cured after three weeks of antibiotics, it is because they did not have the disease!
This shows a profound misunderstanding of the chronic form of this pathology for which active antibiotic treatment very often leads to an increase in the signs and symptoms of the disease at the beginning of the treatment.
This exacerbation known as the Jarish-Herxheimer reaction ("herx" for intimates) may last several weeks to months (Pound et al., Proposed mechanisms and preventative options of Jarisch-Herxheimer reactions J Clin Pharm Ther 2005) .
After 3 or 4 weeks, the "classic" duration of treatment, it is often not possible to observe an improvement. On the contrary, very often, with these heroes, the patient seems to be degrading, although he is on the path of improvement or healing!
It's not just Lyme disease!
We also do not understand why Dr. Desenclos speaks only of Lyme's serology. Lyme disease is just the tip of the iceberg! There are indeed many other infections transmitted by ticks (co-infections): other bacteria, parasites and viruses that can also induce serious pathologies!
Why not look for these co-infections instead of considering that patients with negative Lyme serology have a psychosomatic pathology and that their suffering is "in the head”?
In secret, these same doctors who hold this speech publish on these co-infections and recognize their importance (do what I say, not what I do!): Include for example the article on the parasite Babesia: "Babesiosis in France and in Europe: a pathology to be redefined "in which Prof. Jaulhac of the CNR Strasbourg took part.
Patients with chronic forms of Lyme disease and co-infections have long deserted infectiology services and are now almost exclusively treated by city doctors.
It is very shocking that Professor Desenclos accuses these heroic doctors of being at the origin of the therapeutic wandering of the sick. Not seeing patients or refusing to follow them for more than a few days to a few weeks, the level of expertise of infectious diseases departments on Lyme disease is consequently very low.
The position of Public Health France, ignoring the scientific evidence, has and will have dramatic consequences in France on tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of patients with chronic Lyme disease and not detected by current tests failing. Being considered "non-sick" and therefore not treated, some are, as we have pointed out, sent in psychiatry, others end up paraplegics, some unfortunately die.
And that's without counting suicides ... It is incomprehensible that a state agency explicitly promotes this situation by taking anti-scientific stances. History will judge severely those who peddle these untruths.
* Head of the Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the Raymond-Poincaré Hospital, AP-HP, Garches. President of the Scientific Council of the FFMVT
Translated by Google
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