Sufferers Feel Vindicated by Proof of Lyme-Carrying Tick

While evidence of the first Lyme disease-carrying tick in Los Angeles alarmed hikers and homeowners in the Santa Monica Mountains this week, the news brought vindication to Barbara Barsocchini.

Barsocchini is one of several local people diagnosed with Lyme disease who say they have long been ignored by a medical community skeptical that the illness could be contracted in Los Angeles.

Members of the small band tell similar tales of being repeatedly dismissed by doctors as they sought a cure for their illness, a difficult-to-diagnose combination of symptoms that includes sore joints, chronic fatigue and, in later stages, neurological problems.

Over the years, they have formed support groups, created special Internet sites and launched grass-roots campaigns to warn about the disease.

Last April, a group of Malibu residents who believed they suffered from the disease even called for an investigation of their claims by state health officials. County health officials said there wasn’t enough evidence to support a diagnosis for the nearly 50 residents who believed they were afflicted with the ailment.

Now, though county officials warn that more testing must be done to confirm that local ticks carry the illness, Barsocchini hopes more doctors will begin diagnosing Lyme disease.

“Doctors need to listen to us,” Barsocchini said. “They either say it’s in our heads, it’s chronic fatigue or rheumatoid arthritis. . . . They’re ignoring it and it could be Lyme disease or tick-borne diseases.”

A Topanga woman hiking through Topanga State Park found the disease-carrying tick in December. This week, West Vector Control District officials announced the insect tested positive for the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.

The finding came as no surprise to public health officials, who have suspected for several years that ticks carrying the disease existed in Los Angeles County. Three of the four counties surrounding Los Angeles have reported ticks with the disease-causing bacteria.

And of 28 cases in the county reported since 1989, at least four are believed to have come from local tick bites. Those cases originated in Griffith Park, Beachwood Canyon, Palos Verdes and the Granada Hills area, said Dr. Roshen Reporter, medical epidemiologist for the county’s acute communicable disease control program.

State and county health officials recently launched a study in the Malibu area to research the claims of Lyme disease by the Malibu residents. The study, still in the early stages, has produced no results.

Nonetheless, state and local health officials said that the recent finding may provide the concrete evidence needed to convince doctors who, until now, have been reluctant to diagnose the disease.

“Now physicians will look at it more seriously,” said Dr. James Katzel, head of the UC San Francisco’s Lyme Disease Clinic. “Victims were looked at as weirdos or hypochondriacs. Now you can say for sure that the disease does exist. Here’s hard proof.”

Many physicians don’t immediately recognize Lyme disease because it is extremely difficult to diagnose, experts say.

No accurate blood tests exist to pinpoint the disease, meaning that doctors have to rely on a clinical diagnosis that can take several hours. And the symptoms resemble those of several other diseases. In fact, Lyme disease has been dubbed the “great imitator” by some in the medical community.

Compounding the problem is that the disease is very rare in California. Only 1% or 2% of ticks here carry the illness, compared with up to 90% of ticks in some areas on the East Coast, where the disease was first identified in this country in 1975.

Even more puzzling, Lyme disease is actually on the decrease, though experts in the field aren’t quite sure why. After a peak of 345 reported cases in California in 1990, the number has declined every year to just 67 last year, a drop of 81 percent. “We can’t explain why these figures are dropping,” said Robert Murray, the state health agency’s Lyme disease expert. “They’re dropping in the United States as a whole.”

Nonetheless, victims of the debilitating disease say it’s important for doctors to be aware of the disease. It can be easily treated with antibiotics if caught in its early stages.

The longer a patient goes without treatment, the more painful the disease becomes--and the less the chance of a cure.

Chatsworth resident Barbara Wheeler said she contracted Lyme disease while gardening in her yard last July. After emergency room officials were unable to diagnose the disease, she went to her own physician, who recognized the telltale bull’s-eye rash and promptly put her on antibiotics.

Wheeler credits her doctor with being well-informed. And with saving her from the disease.

“It is not something we’re overreacting to,” Wheeler said. “It’s real pain.”