French doctors told to ‘take tick bites seriously’
France's top health agency, the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS), has recognised that serious forms of Lyme disease from tick bites must be treated even if officially undiagnosed as patients otherwise face severely debilitating health effects.
Last year there were 44,679 case of Lyme disease, nearly double that of 2014, but some people reported after treatment symptoms such as intense fatigue, sleep disorders, pain and cognitive problems, which were not indicative of the disease but mirrored symptoms of of others who had had bites but where Lyme was not diagnosed.
The HAS responded to pleas from GPs involved in tick cases with recommendations for doctors to treat patients even if a test was negative. It grouped such cases as persistent polymorphic symptomatology/syndrome (SPPT) and said doctors should start to take such complaints seriously.
If there was a negative diagnosis from tests but symptoms persisted then doctors should give antibiotics over 28 days to see if that made a difference.
Doctors have in the past been forced to stop practising after giving patients what the Ordre des Médecins called unauthorised treatment and HAS was attacked by the Académie Nationale de Médecine. It said the HAS had accepted there was an illness “without the slightest proof” and “in trying to satisfy everyone has satisfied no one”.
Patients’ groups have said for years that the current tests are not accurate and the Académie said the HAS had given in to “blackmail” from pressure groups and authorised expensive and useless treatment.
Patients and doctors group the FFMVT replied that a few months of cheap antibiotics could avoid decades of suffering for those affected.
