Evaluation and 1-year follow-up of patients presenting at a Lyme borreliosis expertise centre: a prospective cohort study with validated questionnaires.

OBJECTIVES: To describe the course of symptoms reported by patients with symptoms attributed to Lyme borreliosis (LB) without being subsequently diagnosed with LB. METHODS: We performed a prospective cohort study with patients presenting at the outpatient clinic of two clinical LB centres. The primary outcome was the prevalence of persistent symptoms, which were defined as clinically relevant fatigue (CIS, subscale fatigue), pain (SF-36, subscale bodily pain), and cognitive impairment (CFQ) for ≥ 6 months and onset < 6 months over the first year of follow-up. Outcomes were compared with a longitudinal cohort of confirmed LB patients and a general population cohort. Prevalences were standardised to the distribution of pre-defined confounders in the confirmed LB cohort. RESULTS: Participants (n = 123) reported mostly fatigue, arthralgia, myalgia, and paraesthesia as symptoms. The primary outcome could be determined for 74.8% (92/123) of participants. The standardised prevalence of persistent symptoms in our participants was 58.6%, which was higher than in patients with confirmed LB at baseline (27.2%, p < 0.0001) and the population cohort (21.2%, p < 0.0001). Participants reported overall improvement of fatigue (p < 0.0001) and pain (p < 0.0001) but not for cognitive impairment (p = 0.062) during the follow-up, though symptom severity at the end of follow-up remained greater compared to confirmed LB patients (various comparisons p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Patients with symptoms attributed to LB who present at clinical LB centres without physician-confirmed LB more often report persistent symptoms and report more severe symptoms compared to confirmed LB patients and a population cohort.

Validation of cellular tests for Lyme borreliosis (VICTORY) study.

BACKGROUND: Lyme borreliosis (LB) is a tick-borne disease caused by spirochetes belonging to the Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato species. Due to a variety of clinical manifestations, diagnosing LB can be challenging, and laboratory work-up is usually required in case of disseminated LB. However, the current standard of diagnostics is serology, which comes with several shortcomings. Antibody formation may be absent in the early phase of the disease, and once IgG-seroconversion has occurred, it can be difficult to distinguish between a past (cured or self-cleared) LB and an active infection. It has been postulated that novel cellular tests for LB may have both higher sensitivity earlier in the course of the disease, and may be able to discriminate between a past and active infection. METHODS: VICTORY is a prospective two-gate case-control study. We strive to include 150 patients who meet the European case definitions for either localized or disseminated LB. In addition, we aim to include 225 healthy controls without current LB and 60 controls with potentially cross-reactive conditions. We will perform four different cellular tests in all of these participants, which will allow us to determine sensitivity and specificity. In LB patients, we will repeat cellular tests at 6 weeks and 12 weeks after start of antibiotic treatment to assess the usefulness as 'test-of-cure'. Furthermore, we will investigate the performance of the different cellular tests in a cohort of patients with persistent symptoms attributed to LB. DISCUSSION: This article describes the background and design of the VICTORY study protocol. The findings of our study will help to better appreciate the utility of cellular tests in the diagnosis of Lyme borreliosis. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NL7732 (Netherlands Trial Register, trialregister.nl).