Editorial: Lyme fight must go beyond change in numbers

5:43 AM, Aug. 21, 2013  |  Comments
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For those who have been paying any attention at all, it's not particularly shocking that far more people are diagnosed with Lyme disease than typically has been reported.

What's shocking is how long it has taken the federal government to come to that realization. But it is, indeed, a good step that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is making better efforts to arrive at a more comprehensive figure. The CDC says as many as 300,000 Americans are actually diagnosed with Lyme disease each year, substantially more than the 20,000 to 30,000 illnesses reported each year. The CDC says the higher figure comes from a survey of seven national laboratories, a national patient survey and a review of insurance information.

Lyme is typically transmitted through deer ticks and can cause flu-like symptoms leading to a host of serious health problems, including damage to the nervous system. If detected early, Lyme can be treated effectively with antibiotics, but the disease can be misdiagnosed and not everyone sees the signs early enough.

The CDC has come under fire, and rightly so, for giving short shrift to the notion of chronic Lyme disease, which some medical experts say does exist and requires more than the typical two to four weeks of antibiotics to treat it. Making matters worse, insurance companies don't typically cover such long-term treatments, and some doctors have been investigated for using more aggressive approaches to provide relief to their patients.

In fact, a Poughkeepsie Journal investigation has found gaping disparities in how the medical system has treated the disease - and how the cases have been counted.

The majority of Lyme disease reports come from 13 states, and New York is one of them. That's why attempts have been made in Albany and by New York's delegation in Washington, D.C., to change some of the rules. That would include providing doctors with more protections if they are treating long-term cases of Lyme. It also would include establishing a federal advisory committee to ensure that all medical points of view are being represented before public health policy decisions are reached in relation to Lyme.
