What Is The Best Antibiotic For Lyme Disease

Living With Lyme Disease

Most people treated in the early stages of Lyme disease make a quick and complete recovery. Some may experience symptoms for a few weeks after treatment. If you were treated for Lyme disease but you still dont feel well, call your family doctor. They can make sure there isnt something else wrong. They can help you find ways to ease your symptoms. Some patients have found relief with treatments typically used for chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia.

Other things you can do to help manage Lyme disease include:

• Educate yourself. There is a lot of inaccurate information to be sorted through, especially on the internet. Ask your doctor if you have questions.
• Track your symptoms. Keep a diary of your sleep patterns, eating habits, exercise routines, and how youre feeling. You or your doctor may be able to make connections between them.
• Take care of yourself. Eat a healthy diet. Exercise as regularly as you can. Get plenty of rest.
• Find support.It can be hard to not feel well and not know why. Some people may think your symptoms arent real. Talk to friends and family. If they cant offer support, talk with a counselor who can help you.

For Memory Concentration And Focus

Improving memory is a challenge. In Lyme disease, short-term memory problems and word-retrieval problems are common. These often improve substantially with appropriate antibiotic therapy. Over time, most patients regain their cognitive function.

When memory is a problem, consider that this could be due to a primary problem with attention or with mood. An individual who can’t focus won’t be able to remember because he/she didn’t “attend” to the item in the first place. This happens to all of us when we hear someone’s name at a party if we don’t focus on the name and perhaps make a mental association to the name to enhance memory storage, we will forget that name within minutes. Patients with depression often experience problems with memory and verbal fluency when the depression is resolved, the memory and verbal fluency typically resolve as well.

• Medications: Attention can be improved with certain medications, such as bupropion , atomoxetine , modafinil , or stimulants . Medications that temporarily slow cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease or memantine ) have not been studied in Lyme disease.
• There is some evidence that online brain training programs can enhance concentration or processing speed.
• Neurofeedback may be helpful in improving attention, as well as in improving sleep and reducing pain. This has been studied for migraines, fibromyalgia, and ADHD.

For Depression And Anxiety

Both psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy have proven benefits for improving mood. Psychotherapy has many different types such as supportive, dynamic, cognitive behavioral, dialectical behavior therapy, transference focused psychotherapy each of which offers benefit. Pharmacotherapy also has many different types. For depression the first-line options usually are SSRIs, SNRIs, Tricyclics or other agents with more unique modes of action.

A few noteworthy tips on anti-depressant agents:

• Most anti-depressant agents also help in reducing anxiety. However the opposite isn’t necessarily true. Specific anti-anxiety agents such as clonazepam or diazepam may not necessarily help fight depression.
• Most anti-depressants take three to eight weeks before an effect is seen. Therefore, it is unwise to stop an anti-depressant after only three or four weeks, as staying on it another two to three weeks may lead to a good response.
• Dosage makes a difference. Some anti-depressants work fine at low doses some medications however are effective only at higher doses. Some medications are more effective as the dose is increased. Other antidepressants may have a therapeutic range one has to achieve at least a certain dosage .

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Selection Of An Antibiotic

Many factors influence the selection of a particular type of antibiotic and its dosage regimen. Among them are mentioned:

• Duration of infection
• The efficiency of the patients immune system
• The achieved drug concentration level in the blood
• Antibiotic tolerance in the patient
• The activity of the patients digestive system
• Earlier, long-term steroid use
• Age and weight of the patient

All information and articles from the Lyme Borreliosis website are for information and education purposes only. Before following any advice posted on our website, please contact your doctor.The administrator does not bear any consequences arising from the use of the information contained on the website.

What To Expect At The Vets Office

If your pet has been diagnosed with uncomplicated Lyme disease, this is what you can expect to happen at your veterinarians office.

• Depending on the type of test used to screen for Lyme disease, a confirmatory test may be necessary.
• Urine protein screening — In general, only dogs who have symptoms of Lyme disease or protein in their urine should be treated with antibiotics.
• Dogs with protein in their urine should have regularly scheduled rechecks to monitor their condition.

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Picc Line For Lyme Disease:

PICC stands for peripherally inserted central catheter. Inserting a PICC line is a common procedure in which a thin, flexible tube will be inserted into a large vein in the upper arm. The tube will be threaded through the vein until it rests just above the heart. A technician will use a numbing agent so there is no pain and the tube will be guided through the vein with the help of ultrasound and/or X-ray. A PICC line can stay in place for several weeks or months without needing to be changed or taken out. It is a more effective way of delivering IV antibiotics into your body if you intend to be using them on a regular basis. The placement of the tube just above the heart allows for a quicker response time for medications and nutrients, etc. If done properly, once the line is in and the initial discomfort settles, it shouldnt be at all noticeable.

Each infusion with a PICC line will take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half and can be done at your own home either on your own or via a visiting nurse. Otherwise, infusions will be done at a hospital infusion lab or doctors office. PICC lines require regular cleaning by a nurse, either in home or at a facility.

This procedure should be taken seriously, and adequate discussion and caution should be used when considering a PICC line with your doctor.

PROS:

CONS:

Please check out this website, which has detailed information regarding PICC Lines.

What Causes Lyme Disease

People get Lyme disease when they are bitten by an infected tick. Ticks live in areas with a lot of plant life, such as wooded areas or fields. They sit near the top of grassy plants and low bushes. They wait there for people or animals to brush up against them. Ticks can crawl on your clothes or body for up to several hours or more before attaching to the skin.

Ticks can attach to any part of your body. They are usually found in hard-to-see areas, including the armpits, groin, or scalp. An infected tick needs to be attached to your skin for 36 to 48 hours before it passes the bacteria on to you.

People who spend time in outdoor areas where ticks are common are at higher risk of getting tick-borne diseases.

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Macrolide Plus Grapefruit Seed Extract Plus Cryptolepis

• clarithromycin 500 mg 1 pill 2 times a day
• grapefruit seed extract 250 mg 1 pill 2 times a day.
• cryptolepis 5 ml 3 times a day

Key Points:

• Grapefruit seed extract is better tolerated than both tinidazole and metronidazole and supports killing of Lyme cysts.
• Cryptolepis can treat persister and growing Lyme. If a person also has Babesia, cryptolepis can treat this too.

What Are The Side Effects Of Lyme Disease Treatments

Antibiotics, like all medications, have the potential for side effects. Any antibiotic can cause skin rashes, and if an itchy red rash develops while on antibiotics, a patient should see their physician. Sometimes symptoms worsen for the first few days on an antibiotic. This is called a Herxheimer reaction and occurs when the antibiotics start to kill the bacteria. In the first 24 to 48 hours, dead bacterial products stimulate the immune system to release inflammatory cytokines and chemokines that can cause increased fever and achiness. This should be transient and last no more than a day or two after the initiation of antibiotics.

The most common side effect of the penicillin antibiotics is diarrhea, and occasionally even serious cases caused by the bacteria Clostridium difficile. This bacterial overgrowth condition occurs because antibiotics kill the good bacteria in our gut. It can be helpful to use probiotics to restore the good bacteria and microbiome balance.

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Is Doxycycline Oramoxicillin Better For Treating Lyme Disease

Lyme disease can only bediagnosed after a series of blood tests, but sometimes its hard to get aproper diagnosis because the disease itself can mimic other illnesses. Thatswhy Lyme often goes untreated and can progress into a chronic case. In cases ofboth acute and chronic Lyme disease, antibiotics are the first and foremosttreatment, because the bacteria cannot be fought off without it. There are twoantibiotics that can be used in the treatment of Lyme: doxycycline andamoxicillin.

Doxycycline is anespecially popular choice in the treatment of Lyme disease because of itsefficacy as well as its safety in terms of usage for a variety of patients. Italso has the benefit of being effective when treating human granulocyticehrlichiosis , which can often occur in people with early Lyme disease.So, how long should you take doxycycline for Lyme disease? Doxycycline shouldbe taken twice a day for two to three weeks in 100 mg increments during thetreatment of Lyme disease.

Image by Myriams Fotos on Pixabay: Lyme disease presents with flu-like symptoms shortly after the initial infection and can only be treated with antibiotics.

Antibiotics Alone Are Unlikely To Get You Well

This is the second time I am making this point because it is very important. It is essential to your recovery that, at a minimum, your treatment address the steps outlined in my Lyme disease treatment guidelines: The Ross Lyme Support Protocol. Even a year or more into your treatment, these ten steps are essential to resuscitate and support the immune system.

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Antibiotics May Prevent Lyme Disease

June 12, 2001 — New findings released Tuesday show that an antibiotic taken within 72 hours of being bitten by a deer tick carrying Lyme disease can prevent people from developing the illness.

Only about 3% of people who are bitten by ticks will develop Lyme disease, which is characterized by persistent fatigue and pain. But the new study confirms that the risk is highest for people bitten by ticks that haven’t yet reached the adult stage and are at least partially engorged with blood. Although the study will not be published until next month, The New England Journal of Medicine released it early because of the treatment potential.

“The important thing I think is that Lyme disease can be prevented,” says the study’s author Robert B. Nadelman, MD, of New York Medical College and the Lyme Disease Diagnostic Center at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y.

He tells WebMD that although antibiotics won’t be recommended for everyone with tick bites this summer, knowing they work gives doctors and patients a much-needed addition to their prevention methods.

The best-known ways to prevent Lyme disease are avoiding areas known to be infested with deer ticks wearing clothing that covers your skin when you are potentially going to be exposed to ticks and checking your body, hair, and clothes carefully for any signs of a tick after being in the woods or other areas where ticks are prevalent.

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Is There A Vaccine For Lyme Disease

A vaccine for Lyme disease was once available in the United States, but it is no longer available. The vaccines manufacturer discontinued its production in 2002, citing low sales.

According to a 2011 analysis, there were likely a number of factors leading to the decision to suspend the vaccine. These factors included:

• Class-action lawsuits
• Low public support due to efforts by anti-vaccine groups
• Concerns that the vaccine could cause arthritis
• A difficult vaccination schedule.

The CDC also notes that the vaccine loses effectiveness over time, meaning that you’re probably no longer protected against Lyme disease today if you received the vaccine when it was available.

In July 2017, the FDA granted Fast Track designation for another Lyme disease vaccine candidate, VLA15. The FDA designation is intended to facilitate development and expedite review of drugs that treat serious conditions in order to get them to patients faster.

Additional reporting by George Vernadakis.

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What Factors Determine How Patients Respond To Treatment

To find out what made some patient substantially improve or become well, we turned to our academic partners at the University of California at Los Angeles who specialize in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Their team looked at 215 features related to diagnostic factors, treatment approach, duration of individual antibiotics, alternative treatments, symptoms, type of clinician, and functional impairment to identify the 30 top predictive features for treatment response . Most of the top 30 features identified in their study related to chronic Lyme disease treatment , symptom severity , and type of clinician treating Lyme disease. We analyzed three of these factors associated with treatment response:

• Treatment approach
• Treatment durations
• Type of clinician overseeing the patients care

Late Or Chronic Lyme Disease Treatment

Experts agree that the earlier you are treated the better, since early treatment is often successful. Unfortunately, a substantial portion of patients treated with short-term antibiotics continue to have significant symptoms. The quality of life of patients with chronic Lyme disease is similar to that of patients with congestive heart failure. Doctors dont agree about the cause of these ongoing symptoms. The primary cause of this debate is flawed diagnostic testing. There is currently no test that can determine whether a patient has active infection or whether the infection has been eradicated by treatment.

The IDSA thinks Lyme disease symptoms after treatment represent a possibly autoimmune, post-Lyme syndrome that is not responsive to antibiotics. The IDSA essentially regards Lyme disease as an acute infection like strep throat that can be treated with a short course of antibiotics. The IDSA guidelines are now eight years old and do not reflect recent science.

ILADS physicians believe that ongoing symptoms probably reflect active infection, which should be treated until the symptoms have resolved. These physicians use treatment approaches employed for persistent infections like tuberculosis, including a combination of drugs and longer treatment durations. The ILADS guidelines have just recently been updated using a rigorous review of the medical literature.

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What Is Post Treatment Lyme Disease

Post Treatment Lyme Disease represents a research subset of patients who remain significantly ill 6 months or more following standard antibiotic therapy for Lyme disease. PTLD is characterized by a constellation of symptoms that includes severe fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, sleep disturbance, depression, and cognitive problems such as difficulty with short-term memory, speed of thinking, or multi-tasking. In the absence of a direct diagnostic biomarker blood test, PTLD has been difficult to define by physicians, and its existence has been controversial. However, our clinical research shows that meticulous patient evaluation when used alongside appropriate diagnostic testing can reliably identify patients with a history of previously treated Lyme disease who display the typical symptom patterns of PTLD.

Lyme Disease Treatment: 2 Herbal Compounds May Beat Antibiotics

Lyme disease transmitted via tick bite affects thousands of people in the United States and around the world. Currently, doctors use antibiotics to treat it, but could plant-based remedies be more effective?

Lyme disease is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi .

The disease spreads to humans through the bite of a tick that carries the bacterium, and it affects an estimated each year in the U.S. alone.

Currently, healthcare professionals choose between three antibiotics in the treatment of Lyme disease. These are doxycycline, cefuroxime, and amoxicillin.

Sometimes, however, antibiotics are not effective in eradicating all traces of B. burgdorferi from the system, which means that the disease can persist.

When this happens, bacterial cells that have developed antibiotic resistance can continue to proliferate. These are known as persister cells .

Because of this, researchers have been looking into alternative modes of fighting the bacterium, and their first line of inquiry has focused on natural remedies.

In 2018, an in vitro study suggested that 10 plant-derived essential oils could help fight off B. burgdorferi.

Now, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD, and from the California Center for Functional Medicine and Focus Health in Berkeley, have conducted a new study that has led them to believe that two specific plants may lead to more effective therapies against Lyme disease.

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Lyme Disease Antibiotics Overview

The following are four general rules I use to develop a Lyme disease antibiotic regimen.

• Rule 1. Combine antibiotics to treat all forms of the germ.
• Rule 2. Combine antibiotics to treat Lyme living outside and inside of cells.
• Rule 3. Combine antibiotics that work in different ways to attack the germ from different angles.
• Rule 4. Treat all growth phases of Lyme at the same time – this means treatments should include antimicrobials that address persisters in addition to the growth phase of the term.

Awareness Of Lyme Disease

1.1.1 Be aware that:

• the bacteria that cause Lyme disease are transmitted by the bite of an infected tick

• ticks are mainly found in grassy and wooded areas, including urban gardens and parks

• tick bites may not always be noticed

• infected ticks are found throughout the UK and Ireland, and although some areas appear to have a higher prevalence of infected ticks, prevalence data are incomplete

• particularly high-risk areas are the South of England and Scottish Highlands but infection can occur in many areas

• Lyme disease may be more prevalent in parts of central, eastern and northern Europe and parts of Asia, the US and Canada.

1.1.2 Be aware that most tick bites do not transmit Lyme disease and that prompt, correct removal of the tick reduces the risk of transmission.

1.1.3 Give people advice about:

• where ticks are commonly found

• the importance of prompt, correct tick removal and how to do this

• covering exposed skin and using insect repellents that protect against ticks

• how to check themselves and their children for ticks on the skin

• sources of information on Lyme disease, such as Public Health England’s resources and guidance on Lyme disease and organisations providing information and support, such as patient charities.

For a short explanation of why the committee made the recommendations and how they might affect practice, see the rationale and impact section on awareness of Lyme disease.

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