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IJE Advance Access originally published online on September 2, 2005
International Journal of Epidemiology 2005 34(6):1345-1347; doi:10.1093/ije/dyi180
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2005; all rights reserved.

Commentary

Commentary: ‘What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ Shakespeare W. Romeo and Juliet, II, ii(47–48)

Leonard H Sigal1–4,* and Afton L Hassett1,5,6

1 Department of Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
2 Department of Pediatrics, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
3 Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
4 Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Bristol Myers Squibb, Princeton, NJ, USA
5 Department of Psychiatry, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
6 Department of Family Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

* Corresponding author. J.3100, PRI, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Route 206 and Provinceline Road, Princeton, NJ 08543-4000, USA. E-mail: leonard.sigal@bms.com

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

The term ‘syndrome’ (from the Greek ‘concurrence’: a set of symptoms that occur together; the sum of signs of any morbid state) suggests, to many, that a collection of findings represents a disease sui generis. And so it is that ‘post-Lyme disease (borreliosis) syndrome (PLDS)’ a collection of non-specific symptoms, including fatigue, achiness, and cognitive dysfunction, with a marked paucity of objective clinical findings has taken on an identity, a life of its own in the USA and perhaps elsewhere.1 Of note, there are no unique, diagnostic, or even explicitly suggestive findings in PLDS; in fact, there are no objective clinical findings.1 In the hands of certain individuals, be they physicians or patients, such symptoms may be ascribed to ‘chronic Lyme disease (CLD)’—a chronic infection—based on little or no objective evidence . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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