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Showing posts from December, 2018

"Testing Strategies Against Lyme Persisters" by Steven LaRosa, MD

Recently I was contacted and interviewed by a party to get my feelings about the state of treatment of Lyme disease. On the phone we lamented about the sizable number of poor souls who continue to suffer symptoms after what is considered standard of care treatment. I made it clear to the interviewer that I practice only evidence-based medicine and that I treat patients based upon the IDSA guidelines. I also railed against physicians who treat patients with months of parenteral antibiotic therapy for “Chronic Limes’ Disease” (ha ha). I stated fairly aggressive and believe that such practices opens the patient to life threatening infections including catheter-related bacteremia and Clostridium difficile colitis. After I got off the phone I started to do some soul searching. I have gotten so used to saying the same lines over and over again, but when was the last time that I actually had looked at the literature? The answer obviously was way too long ago. I was able to identify 5 cli