People who have chronic Lyme disease are a mystery in the same way that people with ME/CFS who come down with an infection and never recover are.
A recent study that asked why chronic Lyme patients don’t recover could have implications for ME/CFS. It also asked how similar people with chronic Lyme disease and ME/CFS are. Check out a study that was chock full of surprises in Simmaron Research Foundation sponsored blog:
Simmaron’s site won’t let me comment via mobile so, sorry mod/Cort I am in your approval box today a lot.
I appreciate hearing about this it is very interesting.
Ironically I was diagnosed several months ago with CFS after onset in Sept 2015… But about two months ago got (acute) lyme as evidenced by 2 bullseye rashes. I was placed on 3 weeks of antibiotics (I think cdc recomends 2). I didn’t miss a single dose. I was not that symptomatic with lyme, but am a little nervous that I may still have lingering symptoms and just not know because of my cfs and fm, plus other related disorders. Oh joy. 🙂
I am wondering what implications this research has on people who had CFS first and then lyme. I am not good at the sciency stuff. It seems to me that if the gene alterations caused by lyme are similar, then having both probably wouldn’t be that different from having just one?
That’s a tricky question….I don’t think anyone really knows but hopefully those antibiotics worked and you are free of the Lyme. The people who had the worst reaction to the tick bite were the ones mostly to not do well with treatment. How was your reaction to the tick bite?
The rashes themselves were quite light and on areas I wouldn’t of seen if someone else hadn’t of spotted them on me. The rashes were gone within a couple days with the abxs. The headache cleared in a week and was the most prominant symptom, but being that one symptom of cfs is weird headaches I wasn’t alarmed when it struck me! I think at this point I am recovered from the lyme, hope to see this line of research continue to make strides.
I have suffered from Post Lyme Disease Syndrome for 21 years. The Lyme was treated very agressively with a variety of antibiotics, but the residual (and often debilitating) fatigue never left. It has all the earmakers of CFS/ME–brain fog, PEM, vacillating extreme fatigue etc. I have been trying to treat it as though it is CFS/ME without any success (e.g.probiotics, quercetin, methylation pathway –I am homozygous MThFR, COMT and MTRR, etc.). This article actually disheatens me, as it seems to suggest that the PLDS is a subset that will not be cured by the advances in CFS/ME research that I keep reading about. Is there a trial of any kind that I can participate in for PLDS? (I live in Connecticut). For what its worth, if anyone has any suggestions all of the following things make the fatigue much worse–maybe there is a diagnostic conclusion that can be reached by my reaction to them: licorice root, methyl protect, d-ribose, sulbutiamine and I think Acetyl L Carnitine. Thanks for any responses.