lyme disease hearing and IDSA guidelines

Watch this page for live updates Thursday, or follow us on Twitter.

UPDATE: (5 p.m.): The hearing just finished up, and members of The Infectious Diseases Society of America Lyme Disease Review Panel will consider the different points made during the hearing, revisit studies referenced in testimonies, and write a report up regarding new guidelines. The panel hopes to do this by the end of 2009. For more information on the hearing and the possible impact it will have regarding diagnosing and treating Lyme disease, visit Rodale.com tomorrow.

UPDATE (1 p.m.): The Lyme hearing in Washington, D.C., is still in
progress, but here are some of the interesting things we’ve seen so far:

-Current guidelines suggest prescribing a single dose of doxycycline if a
person finds an attached tick on their body; however, one researcher pointed out that it
won't effectively block out infection, and it could also lead to false
negative blood tests.

-The blood tests of people who are chronically ill with Lyme disease may
come back negative because of past antibiotic use, namely, azithromycin.
This is problematic, because current guidelines rely on those blood tests to
confirm Lyme, if an infected person doesn't have a bull's eye rash.

-Some Lyme patients record pain similar to people suffering from heart
failure or osteoarthritis.

-A Brown University statistics expert ripped apart two studies heavily
relied on to create current Lyme guidelines. (The current guidelines are
under scrutiny because members of the group that drafted them, Infectious
Diseases Society of America, have been linked to financial conflict of
interest with vaccine makers, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance
companies. She found inadequate statistical analysis in the trials that
helped form the current guidelines, recommended by the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control.

UPDATE (11:30 a.m.):There’s no definition for chronic Lyme, according to Phillip Baker, PhD, of
the American Lyme Disease Foundation. Well, let’s get one!

-There are more than 100 different strains of the bacteria that causes Lyme
disease, which could explain why some people with Lyme actually test
negative on screening tests, or respond a certain way to treatment.

-Scroll to the bottom of the page to see more updates on our Twitter feed.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS PA—Is Lyme disease a short-term bacterial infection or a long-lasting syndrome that can include chronic pain and disability? Even as the incidence of Lyme disease has risen over the past several years, arguments in the medical community about how handle the ailment have deepened. As part of an antitrust settlement brought by the Connecticut Attorney General to address alleged serious flaws in the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s (IDSA) Lyme disease guidelines, IDSA will hold a panel review hearing all day today. The nearly 20 speakers testifying will include patients, physicians, and research scientists. The panel’s findings could lead to new, and possibly very different, recommendations for doctors and patients faced with the increasingly prevalent disease. If nothing else, it will raise awareness, which could hopefully spur more independent, academic research on the complex disease.

Rodale.com will be live blogging the event on this page today, and we’ll also post updates via Twitter throughout the day (scroll down to see Twitter feed). You can also watch the live stream of the hearing on the web. The hearing started at 8 a.m. and is scheduled to run until 5 p.m.