[aidanfindlater]

Your confusion is understandable. What the article fails to mention is that, although Lyme disease is very real and is increasing, the disease referred to as "chronic Lyme disease" is not recognized by physicians as either Lyme disease or as an infection, but is more commonly classified alongside things like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia as legitimate suffering from an unknown or poorly-understood cause (but not from infection). Other people, like the author of the linked article, disagree, and think that doctors are mistreating these patients. So there's some controversy.

[sooheon]

I'm curious why there isn't a "smoking gun", i.e. the actual Lyme causing bacteria being found in vivo rather than these inconclusive diagnostic tests and questionnaires. Seems like the first step to Getting Serious.

[eigenloss]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1195970/

You can detect Lyme in the bloodstream, but it's much easier and hundreds of times cheaper to look for the human immune response - IgG and IgM - with a Western Blot or ELISA. The actual Bb spirochete is so dilute in the blood that a PCR test (costing upwards of $5k) is typically the only thing that will definitively detect it.

The "getting serious" bit is a policy request: why is the federal or state government paying so little attention to an issue that affects and injures hundreds of thousands of people per year?

[sooheon]

There's all these linked stories of people suffering for years not knowing definitively what they have, a 5k test to diagnose for sure seems like a bargain. I don't understand why the CDC says chronic lyme doesn't exist and suffers claim they think it does but they don't know for sure. Why not settle it with a real test?

[eigenloss]

$5k is hardly a bargain when your insurer refuses to cover it. For some people, $5k is about the cost of replacing their car 10 times.