[Chronic Lyme disease: hype or hypothesis?]

Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd. 2020 Dec 10:164:D5600.
[Article in Dutch]

Abstract

There's an on-going discussion about chronic Lyme Disease: are the persisting symptoms some patients experience due to an inadequately treated Borrelia infection or is something else going on? In 2017 the National Lyme Disease Centre (NLe) has been established in the Netherlands. Two university medical centres, the RIVM and the Lyme Organization participate in the NLe where diagnostics and treatment are offered to patients and research into Lyme disease is carried out. Ideally, collaboration between doctors, researchers and patients leads to research that addresses relevant and urgent questions. Regarding chronic Lyme disease not as a hype but a hypothesis that needs to be verified or falsified, could help both doctors and patients, assuming that they can conclude together that some notions might have seemed rational, but nonetheless have to be discarded based on the results of sound scientific research. That might open new ways to explore treatment of persisting symptoms.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Borrelia burgdorferi / isolation & purification
  • Chronic Disease
  • Humans
  • Lyme Disease / diagnosis
  • Lyme Disease / therapy
  • Male
  • Netherlands
  • Post-Lyme Disease Syndrome / diagnosis*
  • Post-Lyme Disease Syndrome / therapy*