I'm fighting my insurance company for enteric Doxy (Doryx) and was wondering if anyone could guide me to the latest research I've been hearing about stating that Doxy is the drug of choice after a tick bite.
Can anyone help me here? Thanks!!
Posted by erikjh1972 (Member # 20964) on :
if your talking about a tick bite with no symptoms yet then yes doxy is the drug of choice.
Posted by thejoje (Member # 19976) on :
erikjh, Do you have any research for your claim?
Posted by Fogged (Member # 32388) on :
How can there ever be research to back up such a claim? These are basic clinical guidelines established by in vitro studies of the efficacy of the drug in question on known pathogens, the clinical presentation (in this case, the very obvious presence of a tick), the knowledge that these pathogens reside within this vector and are endemic to the area, and upon the known properties of the drug as administered once in the body.
Doxycycline is nearly 100% effective in killing these pathogens in vitro, has excellent penetration in most tissues, is well tolerated, has a known affinity for keratinous tissue (skin) where the bite is confined to, and so, is the drug of choice until something comes along that is even better.
To do real research of this, we would need to take large numbers of tick-bitten subjects and enter them into a controlled double-blind study (with one group getting the doxy, one group getting a placebo) and then wait months or maybe years to see if they came up with either a positive test (often unreliable as you know) or came down with clinical symptoms (highly variable as you all know). Even if such a study could give meaningful and reproducible results..... do you want to risk being one of the subjects in group "B" who never got the doxy in the first place?
Clinicians are forced to give the best treatment known to them according to established guidelines and hope for the best. IMHO doxy should be extremely effective (I didn't say 100% effective) at preventing Lyme from disseminating through the bloodstream if administer immediately while the tick is present. I am deeply troubled, however, by the fact that when I was bitten two years ago and had the deer tick removed at the clinic, I was denied that doxy because there were no other symptoms at the time. No rash... no drugs, and no test. Just the old "wait and see". I may have, in fact, been first exposed way back then and went on to have the little buggers find their way around my body over time. That may be why it hit me so hard this time around.
Posted by thejoje (Member # 19976) on :
Stillwater, Thanks for the info on generic Doryx. didn't know there was such a thing!