PBS Lyme disease can cause serious harm, but so can bogus tests and treatments.
The complexity of diagnosing the tick-borne disease has given rise to an entire industry of unapproved tests and unproven alternative treatments that experts say should be avoided, including lasers, herbal remedies and electromagnets
“It really is a buyer-beware situation,” said Dr. Robert Smith, a Lyme specialist at MaineHealth Institute for Research.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to diagnosing Lyme. Doctors use a combination of visual clues, information reported by their patients and the standard medical test, which has a number of limitations. When patients show the classic symptoms — including a bull’s eye rash, fever and fatigue — a short course of antibiotics usually resolves them. But a subset of patients will go on to experience months or even years of arthritis, pain and fatigue — poorly understood symptoms that overlap with a number of other medical conditions.