Cargando…

The Financial Implications of a Well-Hidden and Ignored Chronic Lyme Disease Pandemic

1 million people are predicted to get infected with Lyme disease in the USA in 2018. Given the same incidence rate of Lyme disease in Europe as in the USA, then 2.4 million people will get infected with Lyme disease in Europe in 2018. In the USA by 2050, 55.7 million people (12% of the population) w...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Davidsson, Marcus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5872223/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29438352
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare6010016
_version_ 1783309789581803520
author Davidsson, Marcus
author_facet Davidsson, Marcus
author_sort Davidsson, Marcus
collection PubMed
description 1 million people are predicted to get infected with Lyme disease in the USA in 2018. Given the same incidence rate of Lyme disease in Europe as in the USA, then 2.4 million people will get infected with Lyme disease in Europe in 2018. In the USA by 2050, 55.7 million people (12% of the population) will have been infected with Lyme disease. In Europe by 2050, 134.9 million people (17% of the population) will have been infected with Lyme disease. Most of these infections will, unfortunately, become chronic. The estimated treatment cost for acute and chronic Lyme disease for 2018 for the USA is somewhere between 4.8 billion USD and 9.6 billion USD and for Europe somewhere between 10.1 billion EUR and 20.1 billion EUR. If governments do not finance IV treatment with antibiotics for chronic Lyme disease, then the estimated government cost for chronic Lyme disease for 2018 for the USA is 10.1 billion USD and in Europe 20.1 billion EUR. If governments in the USA and Europe want to minimize future costs and maximize future revenues, then they should pay for IV antibiotic treatment up to a year even if the estimated cure rate is as low as 25%. The cost for governments of having chronic Lyme patients sick in perpetuity is very large.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-5872223
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2018
publisher MDPI
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-58722232018-03-29 The Financial Implications of a Well-Hidden and Ignored Chronic Lyme Disease Pandemic Davidsson, Marcus Healthcare (Basel) Article 1 million people are predicted to get infected with Lyme disease in the USA in 2018. Given the same incidence rate of Lyme disease in Europe as in the USA, then 2.4 million people will get infected with Lyme disease in Europe in 2018. In the USA by 2050, 55.7 million people (12% of the population) will have been infected with Lyme disease. In Europe by 2050, 134.9 million people (17% of the population) will have been infected with Lyme disease. Most of these infections will, unfortunately, become chronic. The estimated treatment cost for acute and chronic Lyme disease for 2018 for the USA is somewhere between 4.8 billion USD and 9.6 billion USD and for Europe somewhere between 10.1 billion EUR and 20.1 billion EUR. If governments do not finance IV treatment with antibiotics for chronic Lyme disease, then the estimated government cost for chronic Lyme disease for 2018 for the USA is 10.1 billion USD and in Europe 20.1 billion EUR. If governments in the USA and Europe want to minimize future costs and maximize future revenues, then they should pay for IV antibiotic treatment up to a year even if the estimated cure rate is as low as 25%. The cost for governments of having chronic Lyme patients sick in perpetuity is very large. MDPI 2018-02-13 /pmc/articles/PMC5872223/ /pubmed/29438352 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare6010016 Text en © 2018 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Davidsson, Marcus
The Financial Implications of a Well-Hidden and Ignored Chronic Lyme Disease Pandemic
title The Financial Implications of a Well-Hidden and Ignored Chronic Lyme Disease Pandemic
title_full The Financial Implications of a Well-Hidden and Ignored Chronic Lyme Disease Pandemic
title_fullStr The Financial Implications of a Well-Hidden and Ignored Chronic Lyme Disease Pandemic
title_full_unstemmed The Financial Implications of a Well-Hidden and Ignored Chronic Lyme Disease Pandemic
title_short The Financial Implications of a Well-Hidden and Ignored Chronic Lyme Disease Pandemic
title_sort financial implications of a well-hidden and ignored chronic lyme disease pandemic
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5872223/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29438352
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare6010016
work_keys_str_mv AT davidssonmarcus thefinancialimplicationsofawellhiddenandignoredchroniclymediseasepandemic
AT davidssonmarcus financialimplicationsofawellhiddenandignoredchroniclymediseasepandemic