MEP calls for faster diagnosis of disease

West Midlands MEP James Carver said there needed to be a 'revolution' in the way the condition was dealt with after being approached by a chronic sufferer who has had the disease for more than 20 years.

Mr Carver, an independent MEP, said a staggering 29 per cent had the symptoms for 10 years before it was diagnosed.

The UK Patient Survey also revealed that two-thirds of respondents had symptoms more than two years before diagnosis.

Lyme disease is an infectious condition spread by ticks.

It usually begins with a rash, and other early symptoms may include fever, headaches and tiredness.

But if untreated it can lead to 70 unrecognised symptoms, including a loss of the ability to move one or both sides of the face, joint pains, severe headaches with neck stiffness, or heart palpitations.

He said his constituent was campaigning for increased awareness among GPs, improved medical guidelines, testing and treatment.

Mr Carver said GPs often misinterpret the symptoms as chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia

He said: “My constituent is campaigning for a revolution in the diagnosis of Lyme disease because so many infected people are denied early and correct treatment because of mis-diagnosis.”

He said of the 500 patients who responded to the survey, 210 reported that they had been diagnosed with something else, mainly chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia, according to their NHS notes.

Mr Carver added: “Patients have even been wrongly diagnosed with mental health conditions, offered anti-depressants or cognitive behavioural therapy.

“There are also concerns about the reliability of the test, which has a false negative rate of 66.8 per cent and fails to identify many of the different strains of Lyme disease.

“Early diagnosis should make Lyme disease easier to treat successfully. We want to see the proper teaching of the disease, which it is estimated affects 65,000 people a year across Europe, as a compulsory component of medical students’ curriculum and for definitive instructions for the reading of test results across the nations.”

Last November Mr Carver voted in favour of a European Parliament resolution calling for improvements in prevention, awareness and diagnosis of what it called the 'silent epidemic' of Lyme disease spreading across member states.