LDA NEWS & UPDATES
December 2020
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The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), American Academy of Neurology (AAN), and American College of Rheumatology (ACR) announced on November 30, 2020, new guidelines for |
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prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of Lyme disease.
Among the treatment recommendations, the guidelines recommend oral antibiotic therapy for most patients with Lyme disease. The recommended duration of therapy is 10 to 14 days for early Lyme disease, 14 days for Lyme carditis, 14 to 21 days for neurologic Lyme disease, and 28 days for late Lyme arthritis. Retreatment may be indicated for individuals with arthritis who have failed a first course of treatment. Read more.
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BACKGROUND: The 17th Working Group (WG) meeting turned out to be a referendum on the Patient Chapter (Ch 7) of the upcoming 2020 report. The previous nine months of WG meetings had seen the content of Ch 7 consistently eroded by comments from just a few WG members, forcing LDA President, Pat Smith, and Capt. Scott Cooper, the chapter's co-writers, to shorten it, remove material, rewrite material, and move sections around. The terms “chronic Lyme” and “persistent Lyme” were forbidden and therefore could not be used, consequently, they had already been removed. Astonishingly, at this 11th hour meeting, more changes and even a complete chapter rewrite were called for. Differences in IDSA guidelines, LDO’s patient registry information, shared decision making permitting doctors to tell patients about different treatments, and peer review that questioned conclusions of the NIH studies
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LDA President. Pat Smith and Capt. Scott Cooper,
CH 7 Co-writers, at prior TBDWG Meeting
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were all under attack and subject to removal or more revisions. This incredible, final attempt to commandeer Chapter 7 surfaced despite the previous 9 months of unabating scrutiny and various changes already made to accommodate numerous contentious objections at each prior meeting. Read more.
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#GivingTuesday starts December 1 and LDA's campaign runs through December 31. Facebook will match the first $7 million in qualifying donations, made on Dec 1, #GivingTuesday.
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Total funds given to families for their children's medical care through LDA's LymeAid 4 Kids since 2004, totals $399,400, including $36,000 in grants awarded in 2019,and $16,000 awarded in 2020.
The LDA is dedicated to Lyme and tick-borne diseases education, prevention, raising monies for research, and patient support. Thank you for your help.
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A new direct test for Lyme disease, the Nanotrap® Urine Test for Lyme Borreliosis, was announced by Galaxy Diagnostics Inc. This is a urine-based Lyme antigen test, that Galaxy states “provides the most sensitive direct
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detection of Borrelia burgdorferi infection at all stages of the disease.” The test is easily administered through collection of urine and identifies positive cases often missed by the CDC's recommended two-tiered testing, reducing concern for false positive results via direct detection of OspA proteins.
Published data shows that the Nanotrap® Urine Test is very effective for confirmation of early stage Lyme borreliosis in patients with EM rashes. Galaxy states that their unpublished validation data shows that the Nanotrap® Urine Test often confirms active infection in patients with negative CDC recommended Two-Tiered Testing results. Read more.
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A review article has just been published by the Journal of Medical Entomology describing the ticks and tick-borne diseases of Colorado which includes tick-host associations, geographic distributions and medical/veterinary importance. In this article, 28 species of endemic ticks in Colorado are described as well as an additional five species that are occasionally detected, 13 exotic species that have been intercepted and two new state records: Argas radiatus and Ixodes brunneus.
This review creates a baseline for Colorado endemic ticks and tick-borne diseases, ticks that have been classified as visitors to the state via travel related introductions that may not have established populations, as well as identifying potential invasive species and human and veterinary health risks. Read more.
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The Lyme Disease Association (LDA) is providing you with updated COVID-19 protocol developed by the Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Eastern VA Medical School ( EVMS). The EVMS Medical Group continually updates this guideline as new information emerges, primarily to provide new information to physicians. Read more.
The LDA does not recommend or endorse this protocol but provides it for informational purposes, only. Contact your health care provider for medical advice.
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A new study published in Infectious Disease Modelling examines the relationships between incidence, prevalence, and total infection burden for Lyme borreliosis (LB) using sentinel canine and human seroprevalence data.
The researchers developed two models to estimate LB cases. One analyzed seroprevalence of Borrelia infections in human samples, applying corrections for false negative and false positive results from published test sensitivity and specificity measures. Read more.
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December 2 is the last chance to hear about the final Tick-Borne Disease 2020 report to HHS Secretary and Congress. During this meeting, the 2020 report will be finalized and voted on. The meeting is online and open to the public.
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LDA Thanks 51 Lyme/TBD Groups Across US |
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Signing on in Support of New WG Candidates
LDA put out a call for groups to support three already-nominated candidates for the 2021 Working Group. These nominees are individuals that the LDA feels would strongly represent the interests of the Lyme patient community: Elizabeth L. Maloney, MD; Holly Ahern, BS MT (ASCP), MS (Mol Bio); and Wendy Adams, MBA. Our thanks to the 51 groups that signed onto the letter asking HHS to select these candidates for the upcoming 2021-2022 WG.
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DoD Funds New Lyme Vaccine Development |
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Just Announced: Lyme Vaccine Grant
Baylor College, along with Texas Children’s Hospital’s Center for Vaccine Development, have received an $860,000 Department of Defense grant under the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program, to develop a recombinant protein vaccine for Lyme disease. Read more on the Baylor College of Medicine website.
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Donate to LDA, No Cost to You!
Shop using these links and LDA gets a portion of the sales!
You can donate to LDA without costing you anything. Shop through smile.amazon.com, and a portion of the sales will then go to LDA for its programs! To sign up for AmazonSmile and have LDA receive a portion of sales click here.
You can also register to become an igive member through igive.com which includes 2326 online stores to shop from. By shopping at the store through igive.com website, LDA will receive a donation. Thank you!
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