We will have a regular support meeting Thursday July 23 at 5:30 at the Pinney Library Branch in Madison, WI. There is a new member of the group who wants some answers in regard to testing for Lyme as well as the coinfections. Please come and give your experience as many of you have had these tests.
Hope to see you all there!
You may want to warn anyone you know going to Kansas State University….
The $1.25 billion facility is a biosafety level-4 laboratory and will replace the aging Plum Island Animal Disease Center in New York. NBAF is expected to be operational by 2022-2023.
Tomorrow, Wed, June 8, from 11am-12 EDT (unless my brain is failing me, that’s 10am-11am here in Wisconsin), you can hear the following guests on the Diane Rehm show on the topic of Lyme Disease:
tunein.com/radio/The-Diane-Rehm-Show-p31/
Guests
Dr. John Aucott director, Lyme Disease Clinical Research Center at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center; president, Lyme Disease Research Foundation
Paul Roepe co-director, the Center for Infectious Disease at Georgetown University; professor of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology at the Georgetown University Medical Center.
Dr. Sunil Sood chairman of pediatrics, Southside Hospital North Shore-LIJ Health System; attending, Infectious Diseases at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York; professor of pediatrics and family medicine, Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine
Dr. Neil Spector author, “Gone In A Heartbeat: A Physician’s Search For True Healing”. He is associate professor for the departments of medicine and pharmacology and cancer biology at the Duke University School of Medicine.
According to bloggers as of 7 days ago, Spector will not be on the agenda. I hope they are wrong.
http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2015/06/lyme-disease-bacteria-persister-pulse
After being invited to a Lyme conference and meeting suffering patients, Professor Kim Lewis, chief of the Antimicrobial Discovery Center at Northeastern University, thought, “We should really get into this, and maybe try to do something.” From this thought came research and a subsequent report on how to get rid of persisting Lyme cells by timing the dosage of antibiotics. aac.asm.org/content/early/2015/05/20/AAC.00864-15
His team started by killing Borrelia (the causative agent of Lyme Disease) with antibiotics and waiting three weeks. He expected and found that persisters remained. He found this promising as it helps explain why many continue to have symptoms.
He tried numerous things against the persisters – all of which failed, until they focused on Borrelia’s weakness: it doesn’t develop antibiotic resistant “superbugs.” From this conclusion they decided to manipulate dosing by killing the Borrelia, waiting, and then going back and hitting them again. After doing this four times, the researchers discovered no bacteria in the petri dishes.
Lewis is the first to admit that this was only in a test tube, but they are planning to work on studies with animals and humans.
Dr. Harriet Kotsoris, chief scientific officer of Global Lyme Alliance, which funded the research, feels all of this to be very promising. Many Lyme literate doctors (LLMD’s) have used a pulse antibiotic regimen; however, she states the “off” period may have been too long in humans.
The good news, Lewis feels, is that the results of this research should help formulate better drug regimens within a couple years due to the fact it doesn’t require clinical studies in humans that mandate drug approvals.
Dr. James Schaller’s Advanced 2015 Babesia Care
http://www.personalconsult.com/posts/advanced-2015-babesia-care.html
Dr. Schaller first became concerned with Babesia when patients began clotting very quickly when cut. High D-Dimer and thrombin-antithrobin complex formation (TAT) were found in his Babesia patients as well as in research in humans and dogs. Some patients required a prescription blood thinner and some who took Coumadin or other blood thinners couldn’t keep their lab measurements at a constant level. These patients were found to have Babesia and other tick born infections (TBI’s).
He points out that Babesia could exacerbate or cause heart and brain infarcts as it occasionally increases red blood cell size (MCV) as well as the fact that it’s cousin, Malaria, is known to cause brain infarcts.
Cancer is another concern as CD57 (cancer killer cells) levels fall with the killing of Babesia. He states hypereosinophilic syndrome (HES), a blood cancer, could be cured in many patients just by the proper diagnosis of Babesia and the effective treatment for it.
He states that while Babesia is slow growing, a new tick bite or a tick infection trigger event such as a recent divorce, losing a job, car accident, basically anything causing the body stress, can trigger Babesia that has been in the body for decades. He believes the norm is that initial tick bites are experienced as trivial or merely a brief cold or flu, and after years of reproduction serious symptoms start.
Schaller feels most doctors are not considering Babesia when patients show evidence of shredding red blood cells, and when hemoglobin or white blood cell levels decrease, and that they are more cancer-oriented in their thinking. He also warns that while he’s had antibody positive patients, the most respected labs never see it in a smear.
He feels the best Babesia antibody testing, PCR and smear visualization is by IGENEX, but that Bartonella is more common than either Lyme or Babesia and can alter direct and indirect testing results due to its immunosuppression. He states many LLMD’s miss it due to an over-reliance on lab results, and that the common view of Lyme being the “core infection” with Babesia as a co-infection is an error. Also, a negative FISH does not prove a cure.
He found that when patients suspected of having Babesia were exposed to two strong Babesia medications and artesunate, their Babesia antibody test converted from negative to positive, but is concerned about treatment disasters which can occur due to variation of Babesia strains, as well as that Babesia is much harder to kill than malaria, and patient variability in how they respond to the drugs.
Schaller systematically goes over the current Babesia treatments in this article and gives much incite and research. Please refer to the article itself for this information.
Madison Area Lyme Support Group 