Study Claiming "Cure" for Lyme Disease is Criticized Locally

By ROB RYSER 
The Journal News. Publication date: 2/4/2000 

A new Lyme disease study that shows quick cures for patients who received
prompt treatment distorts the potentially serious nature of the disease,
some local doctors and patients say.

The study, published in this week's Journal of the American Medical
Association, found that if the illness is caught early, a three-week
treatment of an oral antibiotic such as Amoxicillin or Doxycyline usually
brings symptoms under control.

In a random selection of 678 patients in Connecticut, Yale researcher Dr.
Eugene Shapiro's study shows that 71 percent said they had been "cured."
Nine percent said they had not been cured, and 20 percent were unsure.

But Dr. Daniel Cameron, an internist and epidemiologist in Mount Kisco who
specializes in Lyme disease, said the study failed to recognize that the
disease often goes undiagnosed for weeks, months or years. At least half
of the time, Cameron said, the red bull's-eye rash -- the signature early
warning sign of Lyme -- never appears after a tick bite.

"A lot of people aren't fortunate to have a rash that presents to the
doctor a nice, clean case," he said. "Usually what I see is people with
fatigue, headaches, dizziness, poor memory, irritability and numbness --
and that is the group that everybody is reluctant to treat and to study."

Lyme disease activist Betty Gross of Irvington said thousands of people in
Westchester and Putnam counties continue to suffer severe neurological
symptoms many years after being bitten by the tiny deer tick carrying the
disease.

"This is the sloppiest piece of research on Lyme that I have ever seen,"
said Gross, founder of the Westchester Lyme Disease Support Group. "There
is a hard-core group of doctors who have made it their mission to offend
Lyme sufferers by presenting a message that is as far from the truth as
you can get."

Shapiro defended his study, saying there was no attempt to alienate
long-term sufferers or to suggest the absence of serious health problems.

He said the purpose of the study was to observe an unbiased group of
people whose condition has been diagnosed as Lyme disease and prove what
scientists have always preached: Lyme can be easily cured in most cases if
it is treated soon after a rash appears.

The big argument has always been over Lyme's definition. Some researchers,
who do not accept the idea of long-term symptoms, say the disease is 99.9
percent curable. Others say the disease can have chronic manifestations.

Shapiro chose his Lyme patients from the Connecticut state Health
Department's database of cases reported between 1984 and 1991. His critics
say those were the early years of Lyme diagnosis, when doctors did not
recognize neurological symptoms as red flags for Lyme.

"That isn't true," Shapiro responded. "Our research found that regardless
of the stage of Lyme, people still had excellent outcomes."

Lyme study's conclusions criticized locally,  
NY JournalNews.com, 4 Feb 2000
http://www.nyjournalnews.com/news/4jn17.sht

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