Lyme Disease: What Makes Diagnosis & Treatment Difficult?

Patricia Smith, President of the Lyme disease Association, discusses the difficulty of diagnosing and treating Lyme disease.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“Patients are certainly facing a lot of problems getting diagnosed and getting treated. Those problems stem from the fact [that], first of all, even 43 years into Lyme disease, there’s still a lot of problems with recognizing Lyme disease. The testing is probably about 50% accurate (the test that’s being used now, the 2-step test).

Physicians aren’t always diagnosing Lyme, and so, patients can’t get diagnosed [easily or in a timely manner]. If it takes a long time for diagnosis, then it takes a longer time for a patient to get treatment. [In the] meantime, that bacteria [are] in their body replicating. Therefore, this is very problematic.”