The Everything Guide to Lyme Disease by Rafal Tokarz

Author:Rafal Tokarz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adams Media

Treatment for Early Disseminated Lyme Disease and Late Lyme Disease

If you develop Lyme neuroborreliosis or Lyme carditis, your treatment may vary depending on how severe your symptoms become. If your symptoms aren’t as bad and you don’t have to be hospitalized, you may be given the same oral antibiotics you would for the early stage, with the treatment lasting for two to three weeks. However, severe symptoms mean you’ll have to be admitted to the hospital and treated with IV antibiotics. The IV antibiotic typically used for Lyme disease treatment is ceftriaxone, which is generally given once daily for two weeks. If at any point your symptoms begin to go away and you’re allowed to leave the hospital, you can finish the required two-week treatment with any of the first-line oral antibiotics prescribed by your doctor. You could also continue the IV treatment at home with the help of a visiting physician’s assistant.

If the Lyme disease has progressed to the arthritis stage, the treatment is the same as for the early stage, except you’ll have to take the antibiotics for four weeks instead of ten days or so. If your symptoms still don’t stop, you will either be given another four-week dose of oral antibiotics or they’ll switch you over to ceftriaxone, twice daily for up to four weeks. If you continue to have arthritis after both treatments, you may be diagnosed with antibiotic-refractory Lyme arthritis, which we talked about in Chapter 3. In this case, further antibiotic treatment is not recommended, as it’s been shown not to work, especially if tests indicate no presence of any B. burgdorferi in your joints. Instead, you’ll likely be given some anti-inflammatory drugs, antirheumatic drugs, or injections of corticosteroids to help with your symptoms.

Fact

Ceftriaxone is an antibiotic used for treatment of Lyme disease and many other infections. Because, unlike other drugs prescribed for Lyme disease, it is administered by IV, pain at the site of the needle insertion is a common side effect.

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