The Financial Implications of a Well-Hidden and Ignored Chronic Lyme Disease Pandemic

Abstract

1 million people are predicted to get infected with Lyme disease in the USA in 2018. Given the same incidence rate of Lyme disease in Europe as in the USA, then 2.4 million people will get infected with Lyme disease in Europe in 2018. In the USA by 2050, 55.7 million people (12% of the population) will have been infected with Lyme disease. In Europe by 2050, 134.9 million people (17% of the population) will have been infected with Lyme disease. Most of these infections will, unfortunately, become chronic. The estimated treatment cost for acute and chronic Lyme disease for 2018 for the USA is somewhere between 4.8 billion USD and 9.6 billion USD and for Europe somewhere between 10.1 billion EUR and 20.1 billion EUR. If governments do not finance IV treatment with antibiotics for chronic Lyme disease, then the estimated government cost for chronic Lyme disease for 2018 for the USA is 10.1 billion USD and in Europe 20.1 billion EUR. If governments in the USA and Europe want to minimize future costs and maximize future revenues, then they should pay for IV antibiotic treatment up to a year even if the estimated cure rate is as low as 25%. The cost for governments of having chronic Lyme patients sick in perpetuity is very large.

Detection and Transstadial Passage of Babesia Species and Borrelia burgdorferi Sensu Lato in Ticks Collected from Avian and Mammalian Hosts in Canada

“…Delays in diagnosis and treatment become chronic infections. Based on US findings, approximately 63% of Lyme disease patients develop chronic Lyme disease [3]. With concurrent Lyme disease and human babesiosis, patients frequently have more pronounced symptoms and, in some cases, they can have fatal outcomes [4].…”

Lyme Disease: Diversity of Borrelia Species in California and Mexico Detected Using a Novel Immunoblot Assay

“…Spirochetes falling into the Bbsl complex are distributed worldwide, with most cases of LD reported in the USA, Europe, and Asia [8,25]. The CDC states that approximately 30,000 cases of LD are reported in the USA each year using surveillance criteria featuring two-tier Bbss testing; however, when tracked using other methods, it is estimated that more than 300,000 people develop LD in the USA annually [26,27]. The fact that CDC surveillance criteria featuring two-tier Bbss testing captures less than one out of every ten cases shows that LD is underreported, and the results of our study suggest that some people with suspected LD who fail to meet surveillance criteria may be infected either by Bbsl or by RFB that are not cross-reactive with Bbss on two-tier testing.…”

“…garinii, and undifferentiated Bb spp. Based on surveillance reporting in the USA, the distribution pattern of Bbss is characterized by human cases reported in all 50 states with the majority reported in the Northeast, upper Midwest, and northern California [26,27]. However, other Bbsl species are not detected by commercial testing in the USA.…”

Differentiating Psychosomatic, Somatopsychic, Multisystem Illnesses and Medical Uncertainty

“…These guidelines gave excessive credibility to flawed testing, failed to recognize the psychiatric symptoms caused by Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, and instead discounted many of the late stage symptoms as being "the aches and pains of daily living", subjective and non-specific, and medically unexplained symptoms. The IDSA Lyme disease guidelines have had multiple criticisms, including being highly biased and lacking objectivity, since the day they were published [41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. The Institute of Medicine's report, Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust [48], uses the example of the IDSA Lyme disease guidelines to illustrate issues associated with untrustworthiness, including problems of conflicts of interests, lack of transparency, and scientific bias in guidelines development-"Unfortunately, patients cannot put their chronic illness on hold until the medical scientists come to a consensus on whether the evidence suggesting infectious causation is or is not close enough to 'definitive.'…”

“…Symptoms such as fatigue, aches, pain, cognitive impairments, mood dysregulation sensory complaints, etc., are categorized by some as "subjective" and argued by some to be less valid [40,109]. Conversely, laboratory tests, even when poorly standardized (such as two-tier Lyme disease testing), and clinical trials, even when poorly designed (such as the Klempner Lyme disease study), are categorized by some as "objective" and, therefore, considered by some to be more valid [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][110][111][112]]. This belief system was quite evident in both the IDSA Lyme disease guidelines and the review of the guidelines [40,109].…”