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  • Correspondence
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Reply to Correspondence

Pediatric Research volume 95, pages 3–4 (2024)Cite this article

We thank Dr. Greenberg for her comments on our study.1 As physicians and psychologists caring for pediatric patients with Lyme disease and their families, we are grateful for the opportunity to respond and highlight several points raised, which were not possible within the scope of the initial publication.

We agree that larger studies with prospectively collected data, specifically in children, are necessary to further refine our study findings. The low number of participants with prolonged symptoms for the outcomes in our study precluded the use of multivariable modeling. We recognize that our study design may have introduced differential response bias. However, it is not clear that our study underestimated the true rate of persistent symptoms in children. While it is possible that non-respondents had more persistent symptoms than respondents, it is also possible that those with persistent symptoms were more likely to participate in the study, leading to an overestimate of the true rate. Also, respondents differed from non-respondents in terms of age and race, and not symptoms or stage of Lyme disease.

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Funding

Funding

This work was supported by the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Children’s National (CTSI-CN) [Grant numbers UL1TR001876-05 and UL1TR001876-02S1] and the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health (to A.M.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Psychology and Behavioral Health, Children’s National Hospital, Washington, DC, USA

    Maureen Monaghan

  2. Department of Pediatrics, The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, DC, USA

    Maureen Monaghan, Marcin Gierdalski, James E. Bost & Roberta L. DeBiasi

  3. Center for Translational Research, Children’s Research Institute, Washington, DC, USA

    Stephanie Norman, Marcin Gierdalski, James E. Bost & Roberta L. DeBiasi

  4. Division of Biostatistics, Children’s National Hospital, Washington, DC, USA

    Marcin Gierdalski & James E. Bost

  5. Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Adriana Marques

  6. Division of Infectious Diseases, Children’s National Hospital, Washington, DC, USA

    Roberta L. DeBiasi

  7. Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine, The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, DC, USA

    Roberta L. DeBiasi

Authors
  1. Maureen Monaghan
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  2. Stephanie Norman
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  3. Marcin Gierdalski
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  4. Adriana Marques
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  5. James E. Bost
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  6. Roberta L. DeBiasi
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Contributions

All authors drafted the response, revised it critically for important intellectual content, and provided final approval of the submitted manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Roberta L. DeBiasi.

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Competing interests

M.M. is currently employed by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health. All data for this manuscript were collected prior to her employment at the National Institutes of Health. A.M. is employed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health; A.M. has a patent (US 8,926,989) and serves as an unpaid scientific advisor to the Global Lyme Alliance and the American Lyme Disease Foundation. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Monaghan, M., Norman, S., Gierdalski, M. et al. Reply to Correspondence. Pediatr Res 95, 3–4 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-023-02790-0

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