GLA’s Chief Scientific Officer Provides Evidence-based Rebuttal of IDSA Letter to Head of HHS and Tick-Borne Disease Working Group Report
by Timothy J. Sellati, Chief Scientific Officer, Global Lyme Alliance
Last month, the Tick-Borne Disease Working Group (TBDWG) published its first report to the U.S. Congress, outlining an integrated, multi-pronged approach to the growing public health challenges posed by tick-borne diseases in the U.S. In response shortly thereafter, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) sent a letter to to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stating that if some key recommendations of the TBDWG are implemented, it “would cause significant harm to patients and public health.”
Below is a rebuttal to IDSA’s unfounded criticisms of the TBDWG, which we find hyperbolic in light of the hundreds of man hours worked on the part of dozens of stakeholders dedicated to collecting, collating, and drafting a roadmap to advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of patients suffering from Lyme and other tick-borne diseases.
IDSA’s letter suggests that there are “significant concerns with the working group’s lack of transparency and minimal opportunities for meaningful public input.”
- The basis for this concern is unclear given that a substantial effort was made to be inclusive of professionals within the academic research community, physicians at renowned academic institutions and in private practice, as well as members of the general public in the form of patients suffering from Lyme and other tick-borne diseases and their advocates. Through contacts with their colleagues and fellow patients sitting on the TBDWG a free flow of ideas and opinions has passed between various stakeholders not part of the working group as well as those on it. The more likely concern of the IDSA is that it could not control the working group’s deliberations and final report through which it means to ensure consistency with the society’s long-held, and some would argue entrenched, ideas about tick-borne disease. Paramount is IDSA’s long-held view that Lyme disease is easy to diagnose, easy to treat, and only very rarely results in lasting consequences of infection. On the contrary, the overwhelming consensus among tick-borne disease researchers is that Post Treatment Lyme disease Syndrome occurs in 10 to 20% of those who received early treatment.
IDSA’s letter also suggests that if implemented, some recommendations of the TBDWG “would cause significant harm to patients and public health.”
- Besides IDSA’s having only very limited support in the peer-reviewed scientific and medical literature regarding unsafe alternative treatment options, this hyperbole seems intended to spread fear, especially when one takes into consideration tick-borne disease researchers’ ever-evolving clinical understanding of Lyme disease, as opposed to the IDSA’s obsolete mantra that Lyme is easy to diagnose, easy to treat and only rarely results in lasting consequences of infection.
”We urge you to ensure that the federal government response to tick-borne diseases is solidly rooted in the best available scientific evidence.”
- Any claim that the TBDWG is not solidly rooted in the best available scientific evidence is unfounded. TheTBDWG report draws from the efforts of subject-matter experts from such diverse organizations as Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of HHS;Stanford University Lyme Disease Working Group; Deputy Director, Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Chief, Bacteriology and Mycology Branch, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); Medicare Hospital Health and Safety Regulations, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S. Department of HHS; Population Health Sciences and Health Services Research Center of the Institutional Centers for Clinical and Translational Research, Boston Children’s Hospital; Vector-Borne Disease Laboratory; and Maine Medical Center Research Institute, just to name a few.
IDSA suggests that the makeup of the TBDWG is “skewed to individuals with perspectives that do not align with the overwhelming majority of scientific evidence regarding the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease.”
- Evidently, one organization’s definition of “skewed” is another group’s diverse voices, opinions, and peer-reviewed evidence. Ultimately it does not benefit the scientific and medical research enterprise nor the Lyme and other tick-borne disease patient community to hew to the notion IDSA promulgates, which is that “Lyme disease is easy to diagnose, easy to treat, and only very rarely results in lasting consequences of infection”. Moreover, one could effectively argue that at least a subset of IDSA members hold perspectives about the persistence of Lyme borreliosis despite initial antibiotic treatment and see the desperate need for alternative treatment strategies that “do not align” with current scientific evidence.
While IDSA acknowledges that the CDC case definition for Lyme disease is intended for use as an epidemiological tool, they suggest “it is it is incorrect to promulgate the notion that the components of the surveillance definition should not be used for clinical diagnosis”.
- However, it is important to note as the CDC itself mentions throughout its webpage that the case definition provided is for purposes of surveillance. Nowhere is it mentioned that the case definition criteria listed should be used for clinical diagnostic purposes alone. The CDC goes on to state that “Surveillance case definitions establish uniform criteria for disease reporting and should not be used as the sole criteria for establishing clinical diagnoses, determining the standard of care necessary for a particular patient, setting guidelines for quality assurance, or providing standards for reimbursement.” Finally, the spurious nature of IDSA’s suggestion that components of the surveillance definition could or should be used for clinical diagnosis is evident in the fact that CDC research has confirmed that annual clinical case numbers for Lyme disease are approximately 10-fold higher than the number reported by the CDC. This upward revision of annual Lyme disease cases suggests that considerably more early Lyme diagnoses are being missed than are the result of inaccurate, ultimately non-Lyme, diagnoses being made.
IDSA acknowledges that “some patients who are successfully treated for Lyme disease continue to suffer from persistent symptoms after treatment”.
- This statement is illogical, however, because a patient who continues to suffer from symptoms caused by infection cannot or should not be classified as successfully treated.
IDSA states that “There is clear, widely accepted scientific evidence indicating that a 10-28-day course of antibiotics, depending on the stage of Lyme disease, will kill the Lyme disease bacterium in humans in all but the rarest of cases”.
- Unfortunately, IDSA refuses to acknowledge that there also is clear, widely accepted and compelling scientific evidence indicating that 10 to 20% of patients receiving a 10-28-day course of antibiotics progress to Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome, which has a clear clinical definition, or the more broadly clinically-defined state of chronic Lyme disease. If one considers the number of CDC-reportable cases for 2016 of 364,290 (based on surveillance case reporting to CDC multiplied by a 10-fold factor to account for estimated underreporting) then 36,429 to 72,858 patients annually progressing to PTLDS/chronic Lyme disease cannot reasonably be considered a rarity.
IDSA supports more research to improve diagnostic tools for Lyme disease and they correctly state that it is essential that clinical education is rooted in the best currently available evidence.
- Yet it is unclear that medical school educators are explaining to students that the best currently available evidence suggests that a large percentage of patients suffer persistent symptomatology as a result of misdiagnosis of early Lyme disease due to deficiencies in the current two-tier test. It is also unknown whether students are instructed in the atypical size, shape and coloration of the erythema migrans (EM) rash, rather than the classic “bull’s-eye” rash, that can be observed in some, but not all Lyme patients. In fact, despite IDSA’s claims, according to the CDC only 70 to 80% of patients with Lyme disease reported to its surveillance system the presence of an EM rash.
IDSA supports increased federal funding for responses to tick-borne diseases and correctly notes that higher level funding should not come at the expense of funding for other diseases, including HIV. The IDSA letter goes on to state that “Pitting one disease against another, as suggested in the draft report, is counterproductive and costly.”
- While everyone can agree with the former statement, the latter is a mischaracterization of the content and intention of the TBDWG report. Suggesting that the level of funding for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases should be commensurate with the case incidence rates is not pitting one infectious disease against another; it is, rather, a fair-minded plea for equitable distribution of limited funds based on current public infection risk. Making comparisons between Lyme disease and HIV merely highlights the disproportionate distribution of funding if one looks solely at case incidence rates for the two diseases.
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