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I was tested for Lyme's disease along a bunch of other things (sarcoidosis, lupus) that could mimick my neuro condition (Transverse Myelitis).

My neuro told me that although Lyme's is rare, but he has heard of Lyme's patients in the UK.

Indeed I have seen a couple of these people being feature in BBC news:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/content ... ture.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/hig ... 419763.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/outdoors/articles/ticks/

Here is a map providing the prevelance of Lyme's in the USA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lyme_ ... sk_Map.gif

These kind of stats suggest where the disease is more common. But people and ticks do travel outside of these areas.

I was tested for Lyme's mainly because I had travelled to Africa a few weeks before I got my TM.

L wrote:]Dr Salvi has his name to 100 or so papers. Most neurologists haven't published. It just seems like common sense that he's above average and therefore, given that he selected patients to be referred to Zamboni, he is less likely to have the high percentage of misdiagnosis amongst that chosen population.

You have a point, in that Zamboni's initial study was relatively small in size. So, it's very possible that all the patients were correctly identified as CDMS. But the initial point was that nearly 100% of people with MS across many studies are showing CCSVI. As the the number of locations and the sample size grows, you would expect to start seeing a trend toward 10-15% not being positive. And I think this 10-15% misdiagnosis is entirely possible. In my own case, the first neurologist didn't think it was MS, and even after suggesting I start a DMD still thought it was a CIS. An MS specialist I went to thought it was CDMS. I think some peopl out there walking around with a diagnosis of CDMS may have had an episode post-viral encephalomyelitis, among other possibilities.