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Expert Advice and Patient Expectations
Laboratory Testing and Antibiotics for Lyme Disease
Alan G. Barbour, MD
JAMA. 1998;279:239-240.
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The reported incidence of Lyme disease, an arthropod-borne infection, is about the same as another spirochetal infection, syphilis.1 But Lyme disease receives far more public and media attention than the sexually transmitted infection does.2 However, this attention is not hard to understand: Lyme disease is primarily a disorder of suburban, educated middle- and upper-class people. Lyme disease can be as disabling as syphilis, but there usually is not a stigma to having Borrelia burgdorferi infection. The demographics of Lyme disease also make it likely that those at risk of infection would be comparatively knowledgeable about the disease and may even have opinions about how to manage it. Does this level of interest—a set of patient expectations and perhaps even demands—influence care itself? In this issue of THE JOURNAL, the article by Fix and colleagues,3 while not directly answering that question, does reveal a possible consequence of . . . [Full Text of this Article]
From the Departments of Medicine and Microbiology, University of California, Irvine.
RELATED ARTICLE
Tick Bites and Lyme Disease in an Endemic Setting: Problematic Use of Serologic Testing and Prophylactic Antibiotic Therapy
Alan D. Fix, G. Thomas Strickland, and John Grant
JAMA. 1998;279(3):206-210.
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Anderson
Arch Intern Med 1999;159:2399-2402.
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Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention of Lyme Disease
Bransfield et al.
JAMA 1998;280:1049-1051.
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