Treatment Trials for Post-Lyme Disease Symptoms Revisited

 Editor-in-Chief

Joseph S. Alpert, MD
Professor of Medicine
University of Arizona College of Medicine
Tucson, Arizona

AJM Editorial Office

1840 E. River Road, Suite 120
Tucson, Arizona 85718
editors@amjmed.org

To the Editors of the American Journal of Medicine,

Re: Treatment Trials for Post-Lyme Disease Symptoms Revisited

Mark S. Klempner, MD, Phillip J. Baker, PhD, Eugene D. Shapiro, MD, Adriana Marques, MD, Raymond J. Dattwyler, MD, John J. Halperin, MD, Gary P. Wormser, MD

In July 1994, SmithKlein Beecham (Now GlaxoSmithKline) filed a Lyme Disease vaccine patent for OspA proteins of Borrelia burgdorferi. In table 1 & table 4 this patent demonstrates the need for human blood, skin and spinal fluid from untreated Lyme disease patients including the late stage presentation Acrodermatitis Chronica Atrophans (ACA) which is a feature of European Lyme disease and usually presents about 20 years after initial tick bite.

If you immediately treat all Lyme disease without restriction until symptoms resolve (As we do for all other infections) where would you find a population of late stage Lyme patients?

Gary Wormser is the lead author of the IDSA's "treatment-denial" guidelines for Lyme disease and in the UK has links to the Baxter vaccine that is going into its phase 3 clinical trials.

The antibiotic treatment trials referred to in the American Journal of Medicine article were not long term. The lead author of the foremost study used to justify this treatment-denial philosophy (Mark Klempner) and the lead author of the treatment guidelines which are used to deny Lyme victims effective treatment (Gary Wormser) are all biodefense researchers and/or biodefense epidemiologists. There has been speculation that these efforts are a large-scale treatment-denial experiment to create a vaccine market by the national security infrastructure. (The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment went on for 22 years.) This certainly offers an explanation for the purposeful mishandling of this disease and continuous disinformation campaign along with the deliberate refusal to listen to the patient voice.

How can hundreds of thousands of sick patients across the nation imagine a fictitious disease including Senator Chris Harris from Texas who was prescribed 17mo of antibiotics for his Lyme disease? The denial of this epidemic and refusal to reimburse for treating persistent infection has caused untold pain and suffering not only in New Hampshire but across the nation. 

Johns Hopkins published a study that followed patients who were treated from an acute Lyme disease stage but went on to develop debilitating symptoms after the standard IDSA treatment protocol. 35% of patients met the definition of post-Lyme syndrome 6 months after treatment and as many as 45% with one major symptom. I have suggested to Dr Aucott he test these patients using Advanced Laboratory Services' Borellia Culture test. We now have proof that persistent infection exists through Advanced Laboratory Services's Borrellia culture test as the laboratory is reporting positive cultures in 80% of symptomatic post treatment Lyme patient specimens so why is the CDC in no rush whatsoever to embrace this technology? Because the true epidemic and deceitful handling of the late stage Lyme disease epidemic will finally be exposed.

In reference to the recent abstract, Treatment Trials for Post-Lyme Disease Symptoms Revisited we believe that the authors of this article will reside at the top of the list with the congressional investigation of the CDC, IDSA and ALDF as called for in the following petition: Calling for a Congressional investigation of the CDC, IDSA and ALDF

A copy of this letter has been forwarded to Senator Richard Blumenthal.