To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore factors which may contribute to a delay in diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease. We identified distinct, potentially modifiable risk factors between onset of first Lyme disease symptoms and treatment. Targeting these drivers may reduce time to diagnosis and treatment and reduce the occurrence of late-stage Lyme disease complications.
This is the first study to examine and quantify sleep quality in the context of well-defined early Lyme disease (LD) and post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS). The findings provide support that sleep disturbance should be considered in the clinical picture of individuals with LD. Sleep quality may particularly be poor and associated with the pain experience for individuals with PTLDS. Future research will need to validate and expand upon these findings to investigate sleep quality in individuals exposed to LD who are not well-defined and/or ideally treated.
We report results from analysis of clinical, laboratory and socio-demographic data provided by the GRASP cohort, which has enhanced our knowledge about factors associated with significant manifestations of scleroderma in African Americans.
For too long, doctors treating rheumatic diseases have had to base their management on instinct and experience.
The problem is that each physician has a limited experience – which means that many times we basically had to guess at how to treat a specific patient, using trial and error to find out what might work best.
This study shows that well-validated symptom surveys could be used by doctors to identify suggestive symptom patterns that could lead to the diagnosis of PTLDS.
Dr. Myma Albayda with the Johns Hopkins Arthritis Center highlights what’s involved in a joint injection.
