CALDA

Letters

Thanks to direct lab reporting, health departments are reporting seven times more cases of Lyme disease in California this year than they reported in 2005 – the total is 65 so far. This number includes only people whose doctors considered Lyme as a possibility and tested their patients – and a survey suggests only one in 25 do, even in endemic areas. Because Lyme is underdiagnosed and underreported, the numbers are artificially low. Doctors often prefer more familiar labels like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, arthritis, or even mental illness. Some minimize the dangers of Lyme disease and some even deny we have it in California. Unfortunately, we do.

My attitude about tick bites changed when I started pulling nymphal ticks off my year-old grandson. After almost 20 years as an educator and patient advocate, I have heard many tragic stories. To prevent possible brain infection, we insist on antibiotic treatment while the tick is being tested, using the Burrascano guidelines from the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, www.ilads.org. We send the tick to IGeneX in Palo Alto, where they perform a highly sensitive and specific DNA test (see www.igenex.com). We’d rather be safe than sorry.

If the tick is infected, it can inject Lyme bacteria into the bloodstream via its saliva within hours of attachment. Most human cases of Lyme disease are caused by the poppy-seed-sized nymphal tick. In Mendocino County an average of 12 to 15% of them are infected, with higher and lower rates in some locations (range 4-41%). The county lab probably tests mostly adult ticks, which have a lower infection rate (about 5%). If the lab results show only 1% of ticks are infected, it may mean the test is not sensitive enough.

Many people with Lyme disease do not recall a tick bite, which is understandable when you consider the size of the tick and the fact that its bite is painless. A CALDA survey found that almost half the patients were not diagnosed for four years after contracting Lyme because their doctors did not understand how to interpret the tests. By then many people are quite ill and require longer treatments. There never has been a study that proves that 2 or 3 weeks of treatment is curative. In many cases months or even years of treatment are needed if the disease has not been caught in its early stages. Patients have the right to choose which treatment they prefer.