Settlement Announced in Landmark Investigation of Lyme Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Guidelines

[Guest guest]

Settlement Announced in Landmark Investigation of Lyme Disease Diagnosis and

Treatment Guidelines

http://www.lymediseaseassociation.org/NewsReleases/20080501.html

 

Patients’ Rights Groups Applaud Connecticut Attorney General Blumenthal’s

Settlement in Anti-trust Case Against Powerful Medical Society

 

Hartford, CT, May 1, 2008 – Patients’ rights groups today hailed Connecticut

Attorney General Blumenthal’s announcement of a settlement in a landmark

antitrust investigation into the Lyme treatment guidelines of the Infectious

Diseases Society of America (IDSA). 

 

“My office uncovered undisclosed financial interests held by several of the most

powerful IDSA panelists,” said Blumenthal. “The IDSA’s guideline panel

improperly ignored, or minimized, consideration of alternative medical opinion

and evidence regarding chronic Lyme disease, potentially raising serious

questions about whether the recommendations reflected all relevant science.”

 

The groundbreaking settlement announced today forces a complete review of the

IDSA guidelines by a new panel free from conflicts of interest, specifically

excluding previous panel members. This panel will consider a range of scientific

evidence in a public forum broadcast live over the internet and will be overseen

by a specialist in financial conflicts of interest in medicine. 

 

“This settlement makes it clear that the IDSA guideline development process was

corrupted by a commercially driven panel that excluded evidence supporting

longer term treatment of Lyme disease,” said attorney Lorraine Johnson,

Executive Director of the California Lyme Disease Association (CALDA). “This

settlement allows suppressed scientific viewpoints and evidence to be heard, and

it is promising news for patients.”

 

This is the first-ever antitrust investigation against a medical society’s

guidelines development process.

 

“We congratulate Attorney General Blumenthal for exposing the IDSA’s conflicts

of interest and helping reduce the suffering of Lyme patients everywhere,” said

Pat Smith, president of the national Lyme Disease Association (LDA). Diane

Blanchard, co-president of Time for Lyme adds, “The IDSA guidelines are

dangerous for patients who suffer longer-term Lyme symptoms that do not fall

within the IDSA’s narrow disease definition.”

 

The IDSA guidelines are treated as mandatory within the medical community. More

than 50 physicians who use longer-term treatment approaches have been

investigated or sanctioned by state medical boards. The guidelines can also

result in financial problems for patients, since insurance companies refuse to

reimburse for longer-term treatment and pharmacies may refuse to fill

prescriptions.

 

The majority of individuals involved in the IDSA guidelines development process

held direct or indirect commercial interests related to Lyme vaccines, patents,

and/or test kits, and did not take the opinions or experiences of the competing

Lyme groups into account.

While the announcement of a settlement comes as a huge relief to suffering Lyme

patients, the case has much broader implications for a health care system that

often contends with conflicts-of-interest in guideline processes – guidelines

which are often used by insurance companies to limit diagnosis and treatment

options. 

 

“Today’s settlement marks an important victory for all patients who suffer Lyme

disease, but it is also a victory for anyone concerned about health care,” said

Johnson. “Commercially driven guidelines that limit patient treatment options

are a major issue today in healthcare, and this decision marks an important step

towards addressing it.” 

 

The national Lyme Disease Association, (LDA), CALDA, and Time for Lyme are

non-profit organizations that were founded by individuals who had personal

experience with Lyme disease, in order to address the lack of education and

support services available for this newly emerging infection.