5 ms·

Kris Kristofferson's Lyme Disease Misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's (2016)

52 points by adsfqwop 7y ago

Arete314159 7y ago
Back before antibiotics, they used to call syphilis "The Great Imitator." The disease, caused by a spiral-shaped bacteria known as a spirochete, could cause so many different kinds of problems it seemed like 10 diseases in one. Genetically, Lyme Disease is very close to syphilis. It's also a spirochete, and it is the new "Great Imitator." (1) The main difficult thing about Lyme Disease is that the tests for it currently are not that good. There are a lot of false positives / negatives, and there is no test that show whether a patient has been cured, only whether they've ever been infected. Neurological Lyme aka neuroborreliosis can cause a number of neurological / psychiatric symptoms, including symptoms like OCD. Doctors never check for Lyme when a patient presents with sudden onset psych problems, even though it's a known cause. TL;DR -- If you're having mysterious health problems, add a Lyme test to your other tests. (1) interesting side note -- there are some studies that suggest it can also be sexually transmitting and/or transmitted from mother to child
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  > TL;DR -- If you're having mysterious health problems, add a Lyme test to your other tests. Or better yet, find a doc that will just give you the drugs to nuke lyme without tests. The tests are only good roughly 50% of the time. False positive/negatives suck, esp if the doctor clings to those tests.
  - jcomis 7y ago
    The problem is Lyme tests are not conclusive, even when Lyme's is a prime suspect. But yes, I supposed you could always just go for the treatment.
  - bin0 7y ago
    If you've got a case bad enough to cause mysterious problems, it's a very bad idea to "just nuke it". Firstly, die-off reactions are a concern. Secondly, the treatment can be very serious (i.v. antibiotics in many cases). Thirdly, antibiotics are not really healthy, though not horribly. However, with the growing body of research surrounding the issue of gut health and its impacts, I'm not sure I'd want to take antibiotics without being sure. With respect to false positives/negatives, use the igenex test. If you get a good doctor, he'll know how to interpret the results better; you can have high results in certain bands which the CDC does not usually consider relevant but which can still be indicative. All that aside, no responsible doc "just gives you the drugs". Let's not forget there are a thousand things it could be; just giving the drugs for all would probably kill you. Also, that's how we end up with resistant bacteria.
    - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
      6 years ago, my wife and I went camping. I ended up over the course getting bit by no less than 15 ticks of various genuses. I got rocky mountain spotted fever, and was treated for that. It's easy to see cause your body gets spots along with pretty nasty illness. During that course, I was also treated for Lyme as well. The key here: I was bitten by the primary carriers of lyme and spotted fever, and had one of those diseases. I'm not recommending everybody be given lyme antiparasiticals - but use some critical thought here. We can tell when we've upped our risk significantly. And some doc that talks for 5 min sure doesn't really have much vested interest.
    - papln 7y ago
      "die-off" seems plausible, but why are all the web-search results for "die-off" showing minor blogs and snake-oil stores, and none of the big medical sites like mayo, webmd, healthline, or mainstream news sites?
      - oblongx 7y ago
        Terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_rea...
  - A4B7h 7y ago
    This is a bad idea for a number of reasons. 1) There are different strains of Lyme disease (and other tick-borne diseases) and certain antibiotics are more effective than others. 2) Using antibiotics where it turns out they might not be needed only contributes to growing antibiotic ineffectiveness.
hudibras 7y ago
The headline on that magazine cover is pretty evil: "Kris Kristofferson's Miracle Recovery from Alzheimer's Diagnosis"
- throwanem 7y ago
  It's a supermarket tabloid, albeit of the glossier, narrower sort. Like any parasite that relies on host interest to achieve reproductive success, being covered in evil lies is literally its one job.
gambler 7y ago
It's scary how hard it is to get quality diagnosis and how stubborn the medical establishment is in maintaining the current status quo. We have treatments for many diseases. We know the symptoms. But because your physician might not know about something, you might need to pinball between specialists (losing time and money) or even not properly get diagnosed at all. A free web-based expert system for medical diagnostics could save a lot of lives. It's really something that should be tackled by the government (because of liability issue). Instead, we have shitty scaremongering websites that list similar symptoms for most diseases, don't give any probabilities, don't tell you what tests are available and instead tell you to "contact your physician".
- caraffle 7y ago
  Of course we have treatments and symptoms for many diseases. But many diseases present the same way. In fact many symptoms are a result of immune response, so naturally they are going to be difficult to differentiate. It's not because the physician doesn't know something. Further, a web based system would limit the amount of information a physician could get and be subject to the reporting of a lay person. Overtreatment and overdiagnosis is also a thing. How would you like receiving thousands of dollars of testing every time you visited the doc? There will be bad docs like in any field but its presumptuous to think most don't know what they're doing.
  - gambler 7y ago
    >Further, a web based system would limit the amount of information a physician could get and be subject to the reporting of a lay person. I'm talking about an expert system. You enter symptoms. It asks you questions. Then it says something "there a high probability you have X and medium probability you have Y".
    - caraffle 7y ago
      And a physical exam? Who's going to listen to your lungs and heart, check out your throat, ears, nose, eyes? Those are invaluable in diagnosing even the most common illnesses.
charlieflowers 7y ago
This typo in the article is too coincidental: > "For the past six or seven years, there was this slow realization that he was becoming forgetful. It was apparent," Gantry said. "For the past six or seven years, there was this slow realization that he was becoming forgetful. It was apparent."
wyldfire 7y ago
> "For the past six or seven years, there was this slow realization that he was becoming forgetful. It was apparent," Gantry said. "For the past six or seven years, there was this slow realization that he was becoming forgetful. It was apparent." I can't tell if this is a subtle joke or an egregious editing failure.
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  It’s an entirely different kind of flying... altogether.
  - wyldfire 7y ago
    "It’s an entirely different kind of flying"
nickysielicki 7y ago
If you live in the Northeast or Midwest, unless you spend zero time in the woods (and you shouldn't, because the woods are great), you will get a deer tick on you at some point, and it might carry lyme. My strategy? Go online and illegally buy doxycycline intended for fish tanks. The pills are exactly the same color, shape, and size as what you'd get from a pharmacy. If you find a tick on yourself, remove the tick correctly (do not crush his body), then crush a pill and make a paste, which you should apply topically. If you wait to see a rash, you've waited too long. If you wait until you feel sick a few weeks later, you've waited too long. There are studies that report the rash appears only about half the time, and the blood tests are inaccurate for the first month or so after exposure.
- nate_meurer 7y ago
  At least one study [1] finds topical doxycycline to be useless for prophylactic treatment of lyme. Do you have any evidence supporting its use? 1 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3910720/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3910720/
  - oblongx 7y ago
    I know my infectious disease doctor told me to take a one day oral dose as a prophylactic treatment after you pull off the tick.
    - nate_meurer 7y ago
      That has nothing to do with its topical application. Drugs that perform well via one route are often ineffective via the other. According to the study I linked, that appears to be case here.
      - oblongx 7y ago
        Right, pretty sure we agree on that one. I thought I was backing you up, suppose I should have replied to parent comment instead...
miramardesign 7y ago
im getting checked next week.. such health issues that wont kill me but wont let me live.

52 points by adsfqwop 7y ago

Back before antibiotics, they used to call syphilis "The Great Imitator." The disease, caused by a spiral-shaped bacteria known as a spirochete, could cause so many different kinds of problems it seemed like 10 diseases in one. Genetically, Lyme Disease is very close to syphilis. It's also a spirochete, and it is the new "Great Imitator." (1) The main difficult thing about Lyme Disease is that the tests for it currently are not that good. There are a lot of false positives / negatives, and there is no test that show whether a patient has been cured, only whether they've ever been infected. Neurological Lyme aka neuroborreliosis can cause a number of neurological / psychiatric symptoms, including symptoms like OCD. Doctors never check for Lyme when a patient presents with sudden onset psych problems, even though it's a known cause. TL;DR -- If you're having mysterious health problems, add a Lyme test to your other tests. (1) interesting side note -- there are some studies that suggest it can also be sexually transmitting and/or transmitted from mother to child

crankylinuxuser 7y ago
> TL;DR -- If you're having mysterious health problems, add a Lyme test to your other tests. Or better yet, find a doc that will just give you the drugs to nuke lyme without tests. The tests are only good roughly 50% of the time. False positive/negatives suck, esp if the doctor clings to those tests.
- jcomis 7y ago
  The problem is Lyme tests are not conclusive, even when Lyme's is a prime suspect. But yes, I supposed you could always just go for the treatment.
- bin0 7y ago
  If you've got a case bad enough to cause mysterious problems, it's a very bad idea to "just nuke it". Firstly, die-off reactions are a concern. Secondly, the treatment can be very serious (i.v. antibiotics in many cases). Thirdly, antibiotics are not really healthy, though not horribly. However, with the growing body of research surrounding the issue of gut health and its impacts, I'm not sure I'd want to take antibiotics without being sure. With respect to false positives/negatives, use the igenex test. If you get a good doctor, he'll know how to interpret the results better; you can have high results in certain bands which the CDC does not usually consider relevant but which can still be indicative. All that aside, no responsible doc "just gives you the drugs". Let's not forget there are a thousand things it could be; just giving the drugs for all would probably kill you. Also, that's how we end up with resistant bacteria.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    6 years ago, my wife and I went camping. I ended up over the course getting bit by no less than 15 ticks of various genuses. I got rocky mountain spotted fever, and was treated for that. It's easy to see cause your body gets spots along with pretty nasty illness. During that course, I was also treated for Lyme as well. The key here: I was bitten by the primary carriers of lyme and spotted fever, and had one of those diseases. I'm not recommending everybody be given lyme antiparasiticals - but use some critical thought here. We can tell when we've upped our risk significantly. And some doc that talks for 5 min sure doesn't really have much vested interest.
  - papln 7y ago
    "die-off" seems plausible, but why are all the web-search results for "die-off" showing minor blogs and snake-oil stores, and none of the big medical sites like mayo, webmd, healthline, or mainstream news sites?
    - oblongx 7y ago
      Terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_rea...
- A4B7h 7y ago
  This is a bad idea for a number of reasons. 1) There are different strains of Lyme disease (and other tick-borne diseases) and certain antibiotics are more effective than others. 2) Using antibiotics where it turns out they might not be needed only contributes to growing antibiotic ineffectiveness.

hudibras 7y ago

The headline on that magazine cover is pretty evil: "Kris Kristofferson's Miracle Recovery from Alzheimer's Diagnosis"

throwanem 7y ago
It's a supermarket tabloid, albeit of the glossier, narrower sort. Like any parasite that relies on host interest to achieve reproductive success, being covered in evil lies is literally its one job.

gambler 7y ago

It's scary how hard it is to get quality diagnosis and how stubborn the medical establishment is in maintaining the current status quo. We have treatments for many diseases. We know the symptoms. But because your physician might not know about something, you might need to pinball between specialists (losing time and money) or even not properly get diagnosed at all. A free web-based expert system for medical diagnostics could save a lot of lives. It's really something that should be tackled by the government (because of liability issue). Instead, we have shitty scaremongering websites that list similar symptoms for most diseases, don't give any probabilities, don't tell you what tests are available and instead tell you to "contact your physician".

caraffle 7y ago
Of course we have treatments and symptoms for many diseases. But many diseases present the same way. In fact many symptoms are a result of immune response, so naturally they are going to be difficult to differentiate. It's not because the physician doesn't know something. Further, a web based system would limit the amount of information a physician could get and be subject to the reporting of a lay person. Overtreatment and overdiagnosis is also a thing. How would you like receiving thousands of dollars of testing every time you visited the doc? There will be bad docs like in any field but its presumptuous to think most don't know what they're doing.
- gambler 7y ago
  >Further, a web based system would limit the amount of information a physician could get and be subject to the reporting of a lay person. I'm talking about an expert system. You enter symptoms. It asks you questions. Then it says something "there a high probability you have X and medium probability you have Y".
  - caraffle 7y ago
    And a physical exam? Who's going to listen to your lungs and heart, check out your throat, ears, nose, eyes? Those are invaluable in diagnosing even the most common illnesses.

charlieflowers 7y ago

This typo in the article is too coincidental: > "For the past six or seven years, there was this slow realization that he was becoming forgetful. It was apparent," Gantry said. "For the past six or seven years, there was this slow realization that he was becoming forgetful. It was apparent."

wyldfire 7y ago

> "For the past six or seven years, there was this slow realization that he was becoming forgetful. It was apparent," Gantry said. "For the past six or seven years, there was this slow realization that he was becoming forgetful. It was apparent." I can't tell if this is a subtle joke or an egregious editing failure.

selimthegrim 7y ago
It’s an entirely different kind of flying... altogether.
- wyldfire 7y ago
  "It’s an entirely different kind of flying"

nickysielicki 7y ago

If you live in the Northeast or Midwest, unless you spend zero time in the woods (and you shouldn't, because the woods are great), you will get a deer tick on you at some point, and it might carry lyme. My strategy? Go online and illegally buy doxycycline intended for fish tanks. The pills are exactly the same color, shape, and size as what you'd get from a pharmacy. If you find a tick on yourself, remove the tick correctly (do not crush his body), then crush a pill and make a paste, which you should apply topically. If you wait to see a rash, you've waited too long. If you wait until you feel sick a few weeks later, you've waited too long. There are studies that report the rash appears only about half the time, and the blood tests are inaccurate for the first month or so after exposure.

nate_meurer 7y ago
At least one study [1] finds topical doxycycline to be useless for prophylactic treatment of lyme. Do you have any evidence supporting its use? 1 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3910720/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3910720/
- oblongx 7y ago
  I know my infectious disease doctor told me to take a one day oral dose as a prophylactic treatment after you pull off the tick.
  - nate_meurer 7y ago
    That has nothing to do with its topical application. Drugs that perform well via one route are often ineffective via the other. According to the study I linked, that appears to be case here.
    - oblongx 7y ago
      Right, pretty sure we agree on that one. I thought I was backing you up, suppose I should have replied to parent comment instead...

miramardesign 7y ago

im getting checked next week.. such health issues that wont kill me but wont let me live.