Dr. Darina O'Flanagan:

It is important, when speaking about chronic Lyme disease, that we differentiate between people who have been treated for it and those who have not because, obviously, those who have not been treated for it can go on to develop the chronic complications referred to, be it neuroborreliosis or arthritic manifestations. There is a danger in labelling people who do not have laboratory diagnostic evidence of positive serology indicating chronic Lyme disease because, as stated by Dr. Cryan, prolonged antimicrobial treatment can lead to side-effects such as central vascular catheter infections, fungal infections and so on. There is also a concern about people who have other conditions such as multiple sclerosis, motor neuron disease and so on. There are many documented cases of people who turned out to have diagnoses that had not been adequately investigated at a proper stage because of a false diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease. We must be very careful in this regard. It is important that diagnoses be made by accredited laboratories in Ireland. I would be reluctant to depend on the diagnoses of some laboratories, for example, in Germany which are not accredited and do not operate to the same high standards applied in Ireland.