I'm sure you enjoy the discussions here
Dr Vappu Rantalaiho, from Tampere University Hospital, Finland, worked with a team of researchers to study radiologic progression in 195 patients with RA. She said, "Early therapy with combinations of conventional DMARDs has been shown to retard the radiologic progression of RA for a period of up to 5 years, but until now the effects of initial aggressive DMARD therapy on radiologic prognosis after that were unknown. We've shown that even after 11 years, early and aggressive therapy achieves excellent results for most patients".
For this study, 97 patients were initially randomized to receive a combination of DMARDs (starting with methotrexate, sulfasalazine, and hydroxychloroquine with prednisolone; FIN-RACo strategy) and 98 received a single DMARD (initially sulfasalazine with or without prednisolone; SINGLE strategy). After 2 years, the treatment of RA was unrestricted for both groups. Patients treated initially with the FIN-RACo strategy were found to have less radiographic damage in small joints, even in the long term, than those treated initially with DMARD monotherapy. According to Rantalaiho, "Probably the most important precondition to our excellent results in most patients was the active treatment policy aiming at remission at all time points. Our results emphasize the importance of early remission for long term outcome. In the present study, the patients who were in strict remission at 1 year had significantly less radiologic progression throughout the follow-up than the patients who were not".
There are two aspects to giving treatments: the remedy and the doctor/patient relationship. Conventional medicine is strong on effective remedies but a consultation may be very short and the doctor may spend more time looking at a computer screen than at the patient.
Alternative remedies on the other hand, offer little or nothing in the way of effective treatments, but a good practitioner will spend a lot of time focusing on the patient. People who have conditions which are not being successfully treated or which are psychosomatic are more likely to be attracted to the alternative practitioner who offers a patient-centred, sympathetic approach.
There are many in the community who suffer from a variety of complaints that I cannot diagnose, and, as people do not like uncertainty about their health, they will find someone who will give them a diagnosis. Not infrequently they will come upon the idea of chronic Lyme disease.
I do not think that the data supports the concept of chronic Lyme disease, and being a Tool of the Medical Industrial Complex (TMIC®), that is just what you would expect me to say. But despite the paucity of data to support chronic Lyme, there is a contingent of patients and doctors who feel that the disease is real.
In the battle to win the hearts and minds of those who are unconvinced about chronic Lyme, those in favor of the syndrome have several options.