divided medicine in the face of tick attack

The ground is mined. Positions clash. Long ignored, Lyme disease now occupies a large place in the public debate. During a tense press conference on Wednesday, June 20, and after eighteen months of work, the High Authority for Health (HAS) made public its recommendations on this disease and other tick-borne diseases (MVT) , developed with many actors of various specialties and badociations of patients.

But, very rare, the Society of infectious pathology of French language (Spilf), which co-chaired the working group, did not sign this text . The learned society must meet at the beginning of July to make its decision. Either the text is validated, and this work will constitute the new National Program of Diagnosis and Care (PNDS), or it will remain at the stage of recommendations.

This document must define the modalities of patient care, replacing a protocol of 2006, also strongly contested. "Lyme disease, and more generally tick-borne diseases, is a public health problem" does the Directorate General of Health, which has put in place a national plan for the prevention and control of the fight against these diseases in 2017. It is on the existence or not of a chronic form of the disease that the experts and the badociations of patients tear themselves – but also about the quality of the diagnostic tests and the treatments.

Still largely enigmatic

Characterized in the 1970s in the United States in the city of Lyme, Connecticut, this disease remains largely enigmatic. It is transmitted to humans by a tick bite Ixodes infected with a bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi from the family of spirochetes. There are no less than 900 tick species in the world. This arthropod, which is mainly present in areas with a humidity level of at least 80%, especially …