Pat Smith Co-Chairs Subcommittee, 2016 Lyme Case Numbers, Scientists Hold Testing Mtg.

 

The Lyme Disease Association Inc. announces that the new HHS Tick-Borne Disease Working Group (TBDWG) has selected co-chairs from the TBDWG for its 6 newly formed sub-committees. LDA President Pat Smith will be co-chair the Disease Vectors, Surveillance and Prevention (includes epidemiology of tick-borne diseases) Subcommittee. The other co-chair is Dr. Ben Beard, Acting Deputy Director, Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, CDC. The co-chairs will work together to select members for their committee.

 

HHS has appointed a new member, Robert Smith, MD, MPH, for the Working Group to fill the vacancy left by Dr. Gary Wormser’s withdrawal.

 

 

 

LDALyme Literacy Blog: From the Desk of the LDA President

The Lyme Disease Association (LDA) reports that the total number of CDC reported 2016 Lyme cases are now available. Never saw them? Not surprising. In the past, the CDC consistently reported Lyme numbers on a weekly basis, as they do with the other reportable diseases, in its MMWR Report, which is published weekly. The last weekly case numbers reported, however, were reported one year ago for 2016.

 

 

It is well known to the medical community that Lyme disease testing methods are highly inaccurate. Addressing the issue, Steven Schutzer, a physician-scientist at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School organized a meeting of scientists from Rutgers, Harvard, Yale, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH, and other academic centers, industry and public health agencies at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Banbury Center, New York. This meeting resulted in an analysis published in Clinical Infectious Diseases which focuses on new scientific advances in testing.

Steven Schutzer, MD