SPPH in the news: What could be amiss with promoting action on an emerging disease? At issue are duelling guidelines, explains Dr. David Patrick, director of the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia. The Lyme disease guidelines most commonly followed by physicians are those of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). Patrick takes issue with the Canadian bills preamble, which criticizes the IDSA guidelines as being so restrictive as to severely limit the diagnosis of acute Lyme disease and deny the existence of continuing infection, thus abandoning sick people with a treatable illness. Patrick says hes concerned this implies support for another set of guidelines issued by the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), which advocate long-term courses of various antibiotics. In 2010, an independent review of these guidelines by the UKs Health Protection Agency called them not evidence based and poorly constructed. The guidelines poorly defined case definitions would result in high rates of misdiagnosis, and its vague treatment recommendations could cause harm, the review concluded. Legislation in the Parliament of Canada should not be based on this, says Patrick, calling it pseudoscience. cmaj.ca/site/earlyreleases/11nov14_Lyme-law-uses-junk-science-says-expert.xhtml
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 22:30:23 +0000
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