Systematic Comparisons between Lyme Disease and Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome in the U.S. with Administrative Claims Data

The eBioMedicine Journal (Chung M.K., et al.) 04.2023, published “Systematic comparisons between Lyme disease and post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome in the U.S. with administrative claims data.”

This study aims to learn more about the cause of Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS). PTLDS refers to patients who have been treated for Lyme disease with antibiotics, but have persisting symptoms long after treatment. The study uses a large nationwide dataset, consisting of billions of billing and prescription records from 2008 to 2016, to try and identify “unique aspects of PTLDS that could have diagnostic” values and causes. This also included comparing patients with Lyme with absence of prolonged symptoms (APS) and PTLDS by looking at the demographic, changes in comorbidity (simultaneous presence of two or more diseases), and antibiotic prescriptions.

The authors of this study wanted to clarify some information in this article. The eBioMedicine Journal (Chung M.K., et al.) 07.2023, published “Corrigendum to ‘Systematic comparisons between Lyme disease and post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome in the U.S. with administrative claims data’.” In this, the authors clarify that PTLDS is “used to describe Lyme disease patients who have
completed antibiotic therapy but then experience persisting symptoms of pain, fatigue, or cognitive impairment.”

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For More Information:

Read the article on the eBioMedicine Journal website.

Read the Corrigendum Article on the eBioMedicine Journal website.

Read more about Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome here.

Read additional LDA articles on persistent Lyme disease here.