One of the stars of Real Housewives ( I’m not familiar with the show) is Yolanda Foster. Her name pops up a lot in my world because of her very public affliction with Lyme disease.

Black-legged tick
Ixodes scapularis, a Black-legged tick/CDC

She has recently chronicled on her blog how bad her affliction is saying that after 3 years battling Lyme disease, she was only able to come back to 60 percent. And it has got worse since December. “I have lost the ability to read, write or even watch TV”, she describes.

One physician responded to Foster’s chronic Lyme disease by saying essentially there is no such thing. Dr. Russell Sanders (a pseudonym) writes in the Daily Beast, I have grave concerns that she’s getting treated for a condition that doesn’t really exist.

He goes on to write I am genuinely sorry for Foster, and the very last thing I have any intention of doing is make light of her pain. I wish her nothing but a full recovery.

However, there simply is no good evidence that chronic Lyme disease is an actual medical condition. As I have written before, while some patients may experience symptoms after appropriate treatment for Lyme,  treatment for persistent or recurrent infection has no grounding in legitimate medical science. On this point the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America are all agreed.

Sanders lays out his case further in the article.

Lyme disease, and in particular chronic Lyme is and will remain a controversial topic with very opposing viewpoints and arguments and I suspect will be for a long time.