Chronic Lyme

I have recently evaluated the overlapping illnesses often associated with CFS including chronic lyme, mold related illness, FM, MCS, IBS and allergies (both food and inhalants). To do this I used patient report questionnaires to help dissect out the important question of the frequency of these overlapping diagnoses in a CFS-only practice. Questionnaires lack some of the diagnostic precision of more detailed case definitions but the inherent biases already built into a CFS-only specialty practice would exist despite any improvement gained by using more accurate case definition discriminators such as exam and laboratory data, if they exist at all.

From the point of view of my CFS-biased practice, chronic lyme does not exist independent of GRV infection but my practice cohort is heavily biased towards GRV and therefore is not well positioned to prove that chronic lyme can exist without GRV.

As for overlap conditions in Dr. Mikovits’ cohort associated with CFS including FM and MCS and chronic Lyme and MS-like patients, I cannot speak to that. However, my clinic is filled with such overlap conditions. I suspect it will not matter very much. They are most likely infected with XMRV if they meet criteria for CFS with or without FM or MCS or chronic Lyme. Perhaps pure FM or pure MCS or pure Lyme will be different in degree of infection and maybe not. It will be very interesting to watch this data develop and expand to CFS-like conditions and the few pure FM and MCS cases that I have seen over the years. I have not really seen what I would call a pure Lyme case but many with CFS and a positive Igenex WB assay and antibiotic failure for chronic Lyme.