Traveler - not sure yet. This is my attempt to get proper treatment via the National Health Service now my consultant has retired. The first infectious disease doctor I saw was lovely and mentioned that the lyme tests are innacurate etc. Unfortunatly his consultant only spent two minutes with me and said there is absolutely no evidence that long term antibiotics work. She has done loads of tests and is seeing me in 6 weeks time.
The vast majority of peer reviewed research does agree with her unfortunatly, so I am trying to find some ways of argueing back (which might well work, she seems the type to like a good debate).
So far my arguements are as follows:
- Peer reviewed research to date has only proved that the long-term use of certain specific antibiotics is not benefitial for certain strains of lyme (USA strains, not UK strains which tend to have more neural symptoms). Plus, methodologies are generally poor (I can blabber on about this for hours if needed, my Masters will come in handy!). We used to think TB also only needed short courses, and that isn't true either
- Recent research on monkeys found evidence of active lyme infection after a standard course of antiobiotics
- One peer reviewed article indicated a decrease in fatigue when using long term antibiotics
More importantly, I am going to push that my response to antiobiotics (and what happened when I stopped the tablets in April for a month) proves that they are still working.
I am, however, keeping an entirely open mind in case it isn't lyme but some other unknown infection which responds to long-term doxy. Doing my research on other very rare options, and came across a new one for me - Whipples disease and I'm sure there must be others out there. But, at the end of the day if Doxy works then the name doesn't necessarily matter....