Prof. Christian Perronne, MD, PhD, outlines his history and the history of resistance within mainstream medicine regarding Lyme disease.
Christian Perronne, MD, PhD, is Professor of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the Faculty of Medicine Paris-Ile de France-Ouest, University of Versailles-St Quentin en Yvelines (UVSQ), Paris-Saclay, France.
He is chief of a Department of Medicine at the Raymond Poincaré University Hospital in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine), belonging to Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris, the Greater Paris University Hospitals.
My fight for the recognition of chronic Lyme borreliosis and other crypto-infections
My experience of Lyme disease started in the early 80s. I used to work in an infectious and tropical disease department in the old Claude Bernard hospital in Paris. I met a young senior registrar, Dr Eric Dournon who learned from the CDC about the “new” disease called “Lyme disease”. He developed the culture of Borrelia burgdorferi and realized the first Lyme serologies in France. Thanks to Dr Dournon, I learned a lot about the first patients diagnosed with this “new rare” disease, especially about the diversity of symptoms and many atypical forms. During my internship, I worked in a rheumatology department in the Bichat hospital. The head of the department was the famous Prof. Marcel Francis Kahn who was one of the major rheumatologists, a great specialist of auto-immune diseases. He knew Prof. Stephen Malawista, a codiscoverer of Lyme disease. ….
We are all very grateful to Professor Perrone’s for his determined focused efforts, leadership and authoritative voice in helping shed more light on the problems surrounding the management of these tick-borne diseases and give them the prominence they deserve.
‘” He was perfectly aware of the poor sensitivity of serology. “
” I discovered that while it was possible to get funds for HIV, tuberculosis or hepatitis C, it was impossible to get money for Lyme disease.”
“For me it was a treason to the Hippocratic oath to abandon all these suffering patients. ”
“He postulated that most of chronic inflammatory or degenerative disorders have an infectious origin that could not be detected by the classical tools of microbiology. He created the concept of hidden infections (“les infections inapparentes”).”
“Gastric ulcer, due to Helicobacter pylori, is a good example of crypto-infection. Ulcer was previously considered as a psychosomatic disease.”
“I published a review of the medical literature showing that routine diagnostic tests were not reliable (Perronne, Front Cell Infect Microbiol, 2014). The low sensitivity of Lyme serologies is now confirmed by a meta-analysis (Cook & Puri, Int J Gen Med, 2016).”
” Before treatment, she sent her blood to a veterinary lab. She had to give the name of a dog to have her blood tested by PCR. The PCR was positive for Borrelia.”