I read that Chronic Lyme disease as a diagnosis is being perpetuated in the alternative medicine community to milk unsuspecting patients for money. Why isn’t Chronic Lyme disease an actual possible diagnosis?
In: Biology
I’m guessing because the word “chronic” means that it is something that will last a long time and keep coming back (whereas acute means short term), and Lyme disease goes away once treated
(could be wrong on this one..)
> Why isn’t Chronic Lyme disease an actual possible diagnosis?
It actually *is* a possible, if rare diagnosis. However it is somewhat more frequently used by those who have no medical expertise (“alternative medicine”) to describe people who have not experienced Lyme disease, chronic or otherwise. So unless you are actually speaking to a real medical professional it would be best to treat the term as a lie; in fact you can generally ignore the medical diagnosis of any alternative medicine quack, not just this particular term.
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection spread by tics. Once the bacteria are treated you should no longer have Lyme disease.
Some people definitely do continue to have long term issues after having had Lyme disease. More research is definitely needed to find out why that is but right now there isn’t enough evidence to suggest a cause (or therefore a cause of action) and the evidence from the medical community leans towards it being a psychosomatic condition (ie the effects are real, but they are caused by the patient’s mental state and not any external factor). The medical term for these people is post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome.
Various patients and activists groups argue that this doesn’t adequately describe what happens to them, and there must exist a disease of Chronic Lyme disease, perhaps caused by the bacteria going dormant for a period of time and then re-surging in the manner of Herpes. The thing is Herpes is a virus, and there’s no indication of why or how a bacteria would ever behave in that way.
However, as I understand it the opinion of the medical community is very much “the jury is out” not “this is completely impossible and absurd”.
That said anyone selling snake oil without a medical study to back it up is a quack.
Latest Answers