Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegates for their presentations. The disadvantage we have is that, other than the Chairman, none of us is a qualified medical practitioner. We have to rely on the advice given to us by medical practitioners. One of the documents I have is from the Infectious Diseases Society of Ireland which was signed by 28 consultants. It has made a presentation to us.

I will quote one or two issues the Infectious Diseases Society of Ireland, IDSI, raised on which the witnesses might comment. I reiterate that we, as members, are at a disadvantage because the document has been signed by 28 different people. It states that in 2016, The Swiss Infectious Disease Society and the Swiss Society for Neurology combined to produce evidence-based guidelines for the management of post- treatment Lyme disease syndrome. That report states "Growing and unequivocal evidence confirms that prolonged or repeated antibiotic therapy for PTLDS is not beneficial, but potentially harmful”. That is one of the issues.

The document continued:

Chronic Lyme disease is usually a diagnosis that a patient with chronic symptoms of pain, fatigue, and difficulty in thinking, acquires in the absence of another explanation for their symptoms. There are many patients with a variety of real and troubling chronic symptoms including fatigue, weakness, myalgias, arthralgias and neurocognitive symptoms who believe they have a ‘chronic’ form of Lyme disease. Although these patients are truly unwell, and some significantly disabled, symptoms are non-specific and overlap significantly with those of other medically unexplained symptom complexes such as chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia. There is no evidence to support occult Lyme infection as the cause of these symptoms. Most will have multiple serial negative Lyme antibody tests in the setting of very long-term symptoms. There is no convincing evidence to suggest that Lyme disease represents either a marker of immunodeficiency or leads to impaired immunity.

Basically, there is an acceptance that patients have symptoms but not all of these symptoms could be categorised as Lyme disease.

The Infectious Diseases Society of Ireland has given us a report that has been approved by 28 consultants. The report seems to differ from the presentations that have been made here this morning. We, as members of the committee, are not medical experts and it is very difficult for us to reach a conclusion when we receive contradictory evidence. I ask the witnesses to comment on the matter.