Post by abbienormal on Sept 5, 2007 6:44:30 GMT -5
This article was posted in one of my yahoo groups this morning. It appears that Dr. Stricker may have been consulted re our Fearless Leader's Lyme disease:
www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070902/A_NEWS/709020321
Small insect carries debilitating disease
They might be only tiny insects, but ticks have the power to turn your life into a gigantic nightmare
By Dana M. Nichols
Record Staff Writer
September 02, 2007 6:00 AM
GLENCOE - When Dr. Raphael Stricker, a San Francisco physician known for treating patients with Lyme disease, received a call from a Washington, D.C., doctor last summer, he became nervous.
Stricker said the caller, whom he did not know personally and whom Stricker did not identify, asked him lots of questions about treating Lyme disease, a potentially debilitating bacterial infection transmitted by tick bites.
"It was such an odd phone call," Stricker said. "I was actually a little paranoid."
Stricker is president of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, which believes Lyme patients sometimes need longer, more expensive treatments with antibiotics than are called for by the guidelines that most U.S. medical organizations follow. Some doctors have been disciplined by state medical boards for giving the longer treatments.
Stricker said the call made sense a year later, when news broke that President Bush in summer 2006 had been treated for Lyme disease and that his physicians deemed him cured when Bush got his annual physical last month.
Stricker said he finds it suspicious that the president's physicians released fairly detailed accounts of the growths in the president's colon but did not say exactly how he was treated for Lyme disease, sidestepping what has become a medical battlefield.
On one side of the Lyme debate is the vast majority of the medical establishment, including major providers such as Kaiser Permanente and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, which sets the guidelines most doctors follow. They say Lyme disease infections can be treated with a few weeks of antibiotics.
On the other side are the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society and thousands of Lyme patients who say the infection persists in their bodies and they need antibiotic treatments that can last months, years or even a lifetime.
That includes park naturalists Steve and Stephanie Diers of Glencoe, who say they've suffered the debilitating effects of Lyme disease for decades.
"The bottom line is money," Steve Diers said. He and his wife say they spend about $11,000 per year on antibiotic medications that Kaiser Permanente, their insurer through Steve's job, refuses to cover.
From 20,000 to 24,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported nationwide every year, making it the most common insect-bite- transmitted disease in America, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That includes 50 to 150 reported cases per year in California. But authorities say that because of the nature of the disease and inadequate testing, there could be 10 cases of the disease for every one that is reported.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America says there are solid scientific reasons for recommending a course of antibiotics of no more than three or four weeks to treat Lyme disease.
"The problem is there are significant adverse long-term effects from these antibiotics, " said Dr. Eugene Shapiro of Yale Medical School, who helped write the Infectious Diseases Society of America guidelines for Lyme disease.
Doctors say patients recover best if they are treated soon after they are bitten by an infected tick.
Often that does not happen because some of those who contract Lyme disease don't know they've been bitten. The spiral-shaped Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria can travel around the body causing a wide array of symptoms from heart palpitations and joint pain to dizziness and mental impairment. The ailment is often misdiagnosed - sometimes for years.
That's what happened to Noelle Sweeney, 19, of Lodi.
Sweeney's mother, Patty Sweeney, said she never knew her daughter had a tick bite. But the symptoms began with migraine-intensity headaches when Noelle was in kindergarten. Then Noelle got stomach ulcers, and later her muscles started to weaken.
"All the leading universities we've brought her to," Patty Sweeney said.
Finally, last year, when Noelle was 18, a naturopath in Reno suggested testing her for Lyme disease. Now, she's been on intravenous and oral antibiotics for nine months - and she's still waiting to get better.
"I am only 19, and I have hot flashes and mood swings and headaches. I am a mess to be around," Noelle Sweeney said.
The Diers, both park naturalists who have had many tick bites over the years, tell a similar story.
Stephanie Diers, 51, came from an active, outdoorsy family. She said she developed Lyme disease symptoms in the 1960s, long before the ailment even got its name.
It wasn't until 1989 that a doctor diagnosed her with Lyme disease.
Stephanie Diers says she believes the bacteria are deeply entrenched in her body and that they survived the long initial treatment she received.
She said that when she goes off the drugs, she begins suffering symptoms again.
Now, she's disabled, unable to work because of the joint pain and concentration problems.
Steve Diers, 54, says he probably contracted the disease in 1995 when he was crawling through leaf litter while flagging routes for hiking trails, one of his duties as a park ranger. Leaf litter is where the small larval form of ticks, called nymphs, hang out, waiting for a blood meal.
Steve Diers, too, has tried to go off of the antibiotics, but he finds his condition deteriorates and he is unable to work without the drugs.
Experts with the Infectious Diseases Society of America say careful studies of long-term antibiotic use for Lyme disease patients have compared the effects of the drugs with placebos and found no difference.
White House staff have not made public whether President Bush received the short-term antibiotic treatment or a more expensive long-term treatment.
A White House media representative on Aug. 15 said she would find a spokesman to answer questions about the president's treatment. But as of Wednesday, the White House had not responded. The White House media office also did not respond to a voice message left again last week.
All staff will say is the president is cured.
Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 754-9534 or dnichols@recordnet. com. Visit his blog at recordnet.com/ blogs.
HOME
www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070902/A_NEWS/709020321
Small insect carries debilitating disease
They might be only tiny insects, but ticks have the power to turn your life into a gigantic nightmare
By Dana M. Nichols
Record Staff Writer
September 02, 2007 6:00 AM
GLENCOE - When Dr. Raphael Stricker, a San Francisco physician known for treating patients with Lyme disease, received a call from a Washington, D.C., doctor last summer, he became nervous.
Stricker said the caller, whom he did not know personally and whom Stricker did not identify, asked him lots of questions about treating Lyme disease, a potentially debilitating bacterial infection transmitted by tick bites.
"It was such an odd phone call," Stricker said. "I was actually a little paranoid."
Stricker is president of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, which believes Lyme patients sometimes need longer, more expensive treatments with antibiotics than are called for by the guidelines that most U.S. medical organizations follow. Some doctors have been disciplined by state medical boards for giving the longer treatments.
Stricker said the call made sense a year later, when news broke that President Bush in summer 2006 had been treated for Lyme disease and that his physicians deemed him cured when Bush got his annual physical last month.
Stricker said he finds it suspicious that the president's physicians released fairly detailed accounts of the growths in the president's colon but did not say exactly how he was treated for Lyme disease, sidestepping what has become a medical battlefield.
On one side of the Lyme debate is the vast majority of the medical establishment, including major providers such as Kaiser Permanente and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, which sets the guidelines most doctors follow. They say Lyme disease infections can be treated with a few weeks of antibiotics.
On the other side are the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society and thousands of Lyme patients who say the infection persists in their bodies and they need antibiotic treatments that can last months, years or even a lifetime.
That includes park naturalists Steve and Stephanie Diers of Glencoe, who say they've suffered the debilitating effects of Lyme disease for decades.
"The bottom line is money," Steve Diers said. He and his wife say they spend about $11,000 per year on antibiotic medications that Kaiser Permanente, their insurer through Steve's job, refuses to cover.
From 20,000 to 24,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported nationwide every year, making it the most common insect-bite- transmitted disease in America, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That includes 50 to 150 reported cases per year in California. But authorities say that because of the nature of the disease and inadequate testing, there could be 10 cases of the disease for every one that is reported.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America says there are solid scientific reasons for recommending a course of antibiotics of no more than three or four weeks to treat Lyme disease.
"The problem is there are significant adverse long-term effects from these antibiotics, " said Dr. Eugene Shapiro of Yale Medical School, who helped write the Infectious Diseases Society of America guidelines for Lyme disease.
Doctors say patients recover best if they are treated soon after they are bitten by an infected tick.
Often that does not happen because some of those who contract Lyme disease don't know they've been bitten. The spiral-shaped Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria can travel around the body causing a wide array of symptoms from heart palpitations and joint pain to dizziness and mental impairment. The ailment is often misdiagnosed - sometimes for years.
That's what happened to Noelle Sweeney, 19, of Lodi.
Sweeney's mother, Patty Sweeney, said she never knew her daughter had a tick bite. But the symptoms began with migraine-intensity headaches when Noelle was in kindergarten. Then Noelle got stomach ulcers, and later her muscles started to weaken.
"All the leading universities we've brought her to," Patty Sweeney said.
Finally, last year, when Noelle was 18, a naturopath in Reno suggested testing her for Lyme disease. Now, she's been on intravenous and oral antibiotics for nine months - and she's still waiting to get better.
"I am only 19, and I have hot flashes and mood swings and headaches. I am a mess to be around," Noelle Sweeney said.
The Diers, both park naturalists who have had many tick bites over the years, tell a similar story.
Stephanie Diers, 51, came from an active, outdoorsy family. She said she developed Lyme disease symptoms in the 1960s, long before the ailment even got its name.
It wasn't until 1989 that a doctor diagnosed her with Lyme disease.
Stephanie Diers says she believes the bacteria are deeply entrenched in her body and that they survived the long initial treatment she received.
She said that when she goes off the drugs, she begins suffering symptoms again.
Now, she's disabled, unable to work because of the joint pain and concentration problems.
Steve Diers, 54, says he probably contracted the disease in 1995 when he was crawling through leaf litter while flagging routes for hiking trails, one of his duties as a park ranger. Leaf litter is where the small larval form of ticks, called nymphs, hang out, waiting for a blood meal.
Steve Diers, too, has tried to go off of the antibiotics, but he finds his condition deteriorates and he is unable to work without the drugs.
Experts with the Infectious Diseases Society of America say careful studies of long-term antibiotic use for Lyme disease patients have compared the effects of the drugs with placebos and found no difference.
White House staff have not made public whether President Bush received the short-term antibiotic treatment or a more expensive long-term treatment.
A White House media representative on Aug. 15 said she would find a spokesman to answer questions about the president's treatment. But as of Wednesday, the White House had not responded. The White House media office also did not respond to a voice message left again last week.
All staff will say is the president is cured.
Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 754-9534 or dnichols@recordnet. com. Visit his blog at recordnet.com/ blogs.
HOME