Edward Kaplan

[Pandamom777]

We were just referred to Dr. Kaplan at the University of Minnesota (infectious disease specialist) by a neurologist at the U of M. I looked briefly on the site and saw that some of his papers have been referred to here. I would love to hear some feedback about him.

Thanks,

Sharon

[Buster]

We were just referred to Dr. Kaplan at the University of Minnesota (infectious disease specialist) by a neurologist at the U of M. I looked briefly on the site and saw that some of his papers have been referred to here. I would love to hear some feedback about him.

Thanks,

Sharon

 

Dr. Kaplan is a very kind scientist who has devoted a signficant part of his life to the study of streptococcus. He is through and through a scientist first. This means that he accepts field input (what you or others will say), will create a hypothesis and then will try to conduct an experiment to prove the hypothesis by controlling other variables.

 

He is neither for or against PANDAS -- he just thinks a lot of the experiments trying to prove or disprove the hypothesis of PANDAS were not great science.

 

When he says evidence isn't compelling -- he isn't disputing what happened, he's saying there could be lots of explanations and that a good experiment wasn't set up to exclude the anecdotal and prove causality. I'm telling you this so that when you hear him say something you interpret it that he's not arguing with you at all. He's just saying that the evidence is mounting that PANDAS is a distinct entity -- he just doesn't think the current studies have yet supported it.

 

In his own study in 2006 with Kurlan, he was running mostly the laboratory tests. He didn't participate in patient selection or controls. So he is rightly proud of the rigor of the tests but he'll also admit that it neither proves nor disproves the PANDAS theory. He'll use the term "it did not support PANDAS" or something like that. When a researcher is saying something like that -- he's just stating it like it is a number. He's not saying anything about whether PANDAS exists or not (despite his co-author's inflammatory titles), Kaplan is just saying that this particular experiment did not find a hypothesized result and that could be for a ton of different reasons -- back to the drawing board.

 

Bottom line, he's a kind person who will listen. He knows everything about strep and if you want to get him going, ask him "so, why is there asymptomatic carriage in people?" or "why do doctors believe asymptomatic carriage is benign?"

 

Regards,

 

Buster

[sf_mom]

;

[sf_mom]

He believes in PAND. Has been a nay sayer of 'PANDAS'.... he is not completely sure its related to Strep. Buster has a very real and accurate perspective on him. I've had a lot of communication with him and it might be worth seeing as I think he would treat for PAND, just don't call it PANDAS.

 

P.S. Are you from the MN area? I am originally from there and have a brother who lives in Edina, as well as many other relatives.

 

-Wendy