Johnson/ Stricker Response to CDC Article

Raphael Stricker2017 Jun 17 10:05 p.m. (15 hours ago)edited

Link Here

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28617768

[Long paragraphs broken up below to assist Lyme patients with visual/cognitive difficulties.]

Chronic Lyme Disease Treatment: Science versus Anecdotes.

• Lorraine Johnson, Raphael B. Stricker, MD.
• Lymedisease.org, PO Box 1352, Chico, CA 95927; ILADS, PO Box 341461, Bethesda, MD 20827
• lorrainejohnson@outlook.com; rstricker@usmamed.com
• The article by Marzec et al. published in MMWR purports to show the dangers of treatment in patients diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease (1).
• Recent reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that more than 300,000 new cases of Lyme disease are diagnosed each year in the USA (2).
• The MMWR article from the CDC describes five anecdotal cases of treatment complications in these patients while ignoring the significant morbidity related to denial of treatment for chronic Lyme disease (2,3).
• The resultant biased report raises scientific and ethical issues about the CDC's role in promoting the best care for patients with tickborne diseases.
• The MMWR piece resulted from anecdotal reports gathered by Dr. Christina Nelson of the CDC. The article notes that the information was gathered because “clinicians and state health departments periodically contact CDC concerning patients who have acquired serious bacterial infections during treatments for chronic Lyme disease.”
• However, an ethics complaint filed against Dr. Nelson by the Lyme disease patient advocacy group LymeDisease.org suggests that these adverse event reports were in fact specifically solicited by Dr. Nelson via emails distributed in 2014 (4).
• Dr. Nelson asked clinicians from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) to provide anecdotal evidence of harm to patients from intravenous antibiotic therapy related to Lyme disease, and she apparently offered coauthorship of her article as an incentive to describe these adverse events.
• She did not ask for consequences of failing to treat these patients, nor did she solicit commentary from practitioners who treat chronic Lyme disease according to the guidelines of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS).
• The risk of any medical treatment is extremely context-sensitive. A crucial question is whether the risks of treatment are warranted given the potential benefits, the availability of other treatment options, the severity of the patient's presentation, and the risk tolerance of the individual patient.
• By asking for an assessment of treatment risks only, Dr. Nelson is framing the issue in a manner that excludes the other half of the equation in a risk/benefit assessment. She is also ignoring an issue that is critical to patients who suffer a profoundly diminished quality of life due to their illness, namely the risk of not treating (5,6).
• Moreover, by failing to mention that these adverse event reports were rare and specifically solicited, she implies that these rare occurrences are a common concern. In reality, studies of the risks and benefits associated with intravenous antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease indicate that the risks of adverse events are no greater than the risks of intravenous therapy in other unrelated diseases (7,8).
• By asking the question only of those on one side of the controversy, Dr. Nelson is further demonstrating favoritism and a lack of impartiality on the part of the CDC. Accordingly, Dr. Nelson's solicitation of anecdotal adverse events for case studies of Lyme disease is a highly inappropriate partisan act of favoritism toward the IDSA viewpoint at the expense of critical stakeholders - Lyme disease patients and their treating physicians - and an attack on the ILADS viewpoints.
• References
• 1. Marzec NS, Nelson C, Waldron PR, et al. Serious bacterial infections acquired during treatment of patients given a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease - United States. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2017 Jun 16;66(23):607-609.
• 2. Stricker RB, Johnson L. Lyme disease: Call for a ‘‘Manhattan Project’’ to combat the epidemic. PLoS Pathog. 2014;10(1): e1003796.
• 3. Stricker RB, Fesler MC. Chronic Lyme disease: A working case definition. Chronic Dis Int. 2017; 4(1): 1025.
• 4. Leland DK. TOUCHED BY LYME: CDC ignores ethics, attacks “chronic Lyme”. Available at https://www.lymedisease.org/touchedbylyme-cdc-ignores-ethics/. Accessed June 16, 2017.
• 5. Johnson L, Aylward A, Stricker RB. Healthcare access and burden of care for patients with Lyme disease: a large United States survey. Health Policy. 2011;102: 64–71.
• 6. Johnson L, Wilcox S, Mankoff J, Stricker RB. Severity of chronic Lyme disease compared to other chronic conditions: a quality of life survey. Peer J. 2014;2:e322.
• 7. Stricker RB, Green CL, Savely VR, Chamallas SN, Johnson L. Safety of intravenous antibiotic therapy in patients referred for treatment of neurologic Lyme disease. Minerva Med. 2010;101:1–7.
• 8. Stricker RB, Delong AK, Green CL, et al. Benefit of intravenous antibiotic therapy in patients referred for treatment of neurologic Lyme disease. Int J Gen Med. 2011; 4: 639–646.

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