National Lyme Report Poll: Antibiotics Still King In Treatment of Chronic Lyme Disease
4-Page Media, Inc.
A new National Lyme Reportpoll of 4,232 readers delivered up numbers that might surprise you, with 51 percent agreeing that "broad-spectrum antibiotics are the most effective treatment for chronic Lyme disease" while 49 percent chose medicinal herbs and supplements as the best regimens to follow.
Broad-spectrum antibiotics include Amoxicillin, Doxycylcine, Cipro and others. All require a doctor to first diagnose Lyme disease and then agree to treat it with an adequate and appropriate course of the drugs.
As Lyme patients know all too well, getting that diagnosis and prescription can be difficult.
That's why some patients turn to herbs and supplements; because they can't find a doctor who will give them antibiotics, the alternatives are their only means of treating the illness.
A second reason patients choose alternative therapies is a matter of personal integrity that's in keeping with their philosophical opposition to pharmaceutical drugs in general, and antibiotics in particular.
Back to doctors and the precribing of antibiotics, a National Lyme Report survey of 100 clinically-diagnosed Lyme patients last April indicated that just six out of 10 received a course of antibiotics even after their doctors had diagnosed Lyme.
Those who did get antibiotics said their MDs had prescribed the drugs for anywhere from three days to three years, indicating how Lyme treatment can vary doctor to doctor for reasons that often are unclear.
An "appropriate dose" as endorsed by federal authorities at the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health, among others, is three to four weeks - although not everyone agrees that that is sufficient to defeat chronic Lyme.
Many patients argue for the long-term or open-ended prescription of antibiotics, and the issue is both emotion-charged and steeped in controversy. For the record, National Lyme Report editorially supports patients of chronic Lyme in their fight to get antibiotic treatment that they, as patients, consider adequate. And we encourage doctors to pay less attention to guidelines and more attention to individuals.
Aside from antibiotics, several specific herbal therapies got a thumbs up from chronic-Lyme patients who participated in our poll. Here is the breakdown in descending order of what respondents judged to be effectiveness.
Remember, the poll specifically asked for "therapies that were most effective against chronic Lyme disease," which is broadly defined by serious symptoms that have lasted for months, years or decades:
1. Broad-spectrum antibiotics: 51%
2. Cat's Claw products: 19% (sold by doctors and other licensed professionals and retailers).
3. Venus Flytrap Extract: 17% sold by doctors and other licensed professionals and retailers.
4. Andrographis & Teasel Root. 10% (various manufacturers, sold by doctors and other licensed professionals and retailers).
Article submitted Sunday, September 09, 2007 & read 231 times.
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