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Lyme DiseaseShift the Paradigm!
Charles Ellenbogen, MD
Arch Fam Med. 1997;6(2):191-195.
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| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings. |
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CHRONIC LYME disease is the last of 3 clinical stages (Table 1) of infection due to the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi. Chronic Lyme disease develops in only a few patients with Lyme disease, and the clinical manifestations divide into 2 categories. The first category of clinical manifestations is characterized by objective evidence of disease, including arthritis, encephalopathy or polyneuropathy, and, uncommonly, cardiac disease. The diagnostic criteria of the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) specify that patients must have objective evidence of disease to be truly diagnosed as having chronic Lyme disease (Table 2).
The second category of clinical manifestations is characterized by subjective, often nonspecific symptoms without objective evidence of disease of joints, nervous system, or heart. Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and fibromyalgia are examples of this category. Patients with illnesses in this category may be relatively common since one retrospective study found that as many as
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
Author Affiliations
Fayetteville, NC
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