THE VIEW THAT LYME DISEASE IS OVERDIAGNOSED. Less than three months before the CDC announcement that the number of Lyme disease cases per year was ten times larger than had been reported, Beth Daley had an excellent article in the Boston Globe on the controversy over treatment of Lyme disease. There are important segments of the medical community who continue to believe that Lyme disease has been overdiagnosed and overtreated.The major treatment for chronic Lyme disease is continued doses of antibiotics (which is a continuation of the standard treatment for newly diagnosed Lyme disease). This treatment is controversial. I had posted here over four years ago about a new law in Connecticut that protected doctors who treated patients with long-term antibiotics from receiving disciplinary action by the Department of Public Health and the Connecticut Medical Examining Board. Other states have had to pass similar laws. Beth Daley says that: “Politically, the advocates are … gaining ground. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut have passed laws in recent years to protect doctors from being disciplined by medical boards for continued use of antibiotics for chronic Lyme.”
It seems to me that the advocates are gaining ground very slowly.