Archive for the ‘Ehrlichiosis’ Category

Know Your Ticks

https://www.globallymealliance.org/tick-table/

Know your ticks

Easy to read table shows the most common ticks found in the U.S. that transmit pathogens to humans.
Note: only a partial list. To learn more about tick-bite prevention and how to be Tick AWARE, click here

Click here to download the Tick Table

Tick Table

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Remember, in Wisconsin, ticks are found in every county in the state. Researchers are also finding them in bright, open, mowed lawns.

Category:

Alpha Gal Meat Allergy, Anaplasmosis, Bartonella, Borrelia Miyamotoi (Relapsing Fever Group), Ehrlichiosis, Lyme, Mycoplasma, Parasite Treatment, Rickettsia, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Tickborne Relapsing Fever, Ticks, Transmission, Tularemia, Viruses

Need for Tick Bite Reporting in Non-Endemic States

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/9/6/771/htm

Tick-Borne Surveillance Patterns in Perceived Non-Endemic Geographic Areas: Human Tick Encounters and Disease Outcomes

by Sarah P. Maxwell1,*,Connie L. McNeely2,Kevin Thomas3 andChris Brooks3
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Raphael B. Stricker
Healthcare 2021, 9(6), 771; https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9060771
Received: 12 May 2021 / Revised: 15 June 2021 / Accepted: 16 June 2021 / Published: 21 June 2021
Abstract
Recent scholarship supports the use of tick bite encounters as a proxy for human disease risk. Extending entomological monitoring, this study was designed to provide geographically salient information on self-reported tick bite encounters by survey respondents who concomitantly reported a Lyme disease (LD) diagnosis in a state perceived as non-endemic to tick-borne illness. Focusing on Texas, a mixed-methods approach was used to compare data on tick bite encounters from self-reported LD patients with county-level confirmed cases of LD from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as serological canine reports.
A greater proportion of respondents reported not recalling a tick bite in the study population, but a binomial test indicated that this difference was not statistically significant. A secondary analysis compared neighboring county-level data and ecological regions.
Using multi-layer thematic mapping, our findings indicated that tick bite reports accurately overlapped with the geographic patterns of those patients previously known to be CDC-positive for serological LD and with canine-positive tests for Borrelia burgdorferi, anaplasmosis, and ehrlichiosis, as well as within neighboring counties and ecological regions. LD patient-reported tick bite encounters, corrected for population density, also accurately aligned with official CDC county hot-spots. Given the large number of counties in Texas, these findings are notable.
Overall, the study demonstrates that direct, clinically diagnosed patient reports with county-level tick bite encounter data offer important public health surveillance measures, particularly as it pertains to difficult-to-diagnose diseases where testing protocols may not be well established. Further integration of geo-ecological and socio-demographic factors with existing national epidemiological data, as well as increasingly accessible self-report methods such as online surveys, will contribute to the contextual information needed to organize and implement a coordinated public health response to LD.
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Important excerpts:
  • Primary care physicians may under-diagnose LD in areas perceived as non-endemic [33].
  • Misdiagnosis was reported in seventy-two percent of respondents in a large survey [34], indicating the need for improved surveillance beyond entomology that links tick encounters with human disease risk, which can inform diagnostic approaches.
  • The need for expanded and improved LD research and knowledge is highly apparent for the benefit of both patients and health practitioners.
  • Given that LD is often labeled a “contested illness,” TTS respondents who may be perceived as “faking it” could easily report any random county if their tick bites were indeed a false entry in the TTS survey. In other words, it would be highly unlikely that the totality of respondents’ tick bite reports would map directly to confirmed official CDC cases or canine serological findings through attempted deception. TTS-reported tick bites overlap almost exactly with CDC-confirmed LD cases in county-level and eco-region analyses. In one case, in a county in which TTS respondents did not overlap with human cases, tick encounter reports did overlap with a positive canine county.
You know it’s bad when researchers have to deal with the myth that patients are considered deceivers.

Category:

Anaplasmosis, Ehrlichiosis, Lyme, research, Ticks

Tick Season 2021: Why Researchers Are Focusing on Staten Island Backyards

https://www.silive.com/news/2021/06/tick-season-2021-heres-why-researchers-are-focusing-on-staten-island-backyards.html

Tick season 2021: Here’s why researchers are focusing on Staten Island backyards

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — For the last four years, researchers from Columbia University have been studying the rise in tick populations and Lyme disease on Staten Island — and the work continues this summer as they drag for ticks, set up hair traps and place trail cameras in residents’ backyards.

The researchers are studying both parks and residential areas to better understand the ecology of ticks and the risk of tick-transmitted diseases in urban environments. And ticks are now being found across all of Staten Island, not just in the southernmost parts.

Most notably, the Asian longhorned tick continues to spread across the borough.

(See link for article)

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**Comment**

For more on Diuk-Wasser’s work.

Category:

Anaplasmosis, Ehrlichiosis, Lyme, research, Rickettsia, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Ticks, Transmission

The Impatient Patient

https://www.globallymealliance.org/blog/the-impatient-patient

The Impatient Patient

by Jennifer Crystal on April 12, 2021

<img style="box-sizing:inherit;max-width:100%;height:auto;" src="https://www.globallymealliance.org/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/MyLymeLife_2-87-3.png&quot; alt="The Impatient Patient“>

by Jennifer Crystal

When would I get better? Why was I not seeing improvement every day?

Recently a friend’s toddler son asked her for a snack. Holding his baby sister, my friend told her son he’d need to wait a minute. He looked at her squarely and asked, “Does anyone like to wait?” Kids have a way of telling it like it is. The truth is, no one is great at patience, especially when we’re hungry, tired, or anticipating a big event. Perhaps the hardest time to wait is when we’re sick. “Patients” are ironically named because when we’re stuck in bed waiting to feel better, waiting for medication to work, waiting to live, we become very impatient.

I was impatient even before I got sick. A high-achieving lifestyle and the pressures that come with it always made me feel like I needed to hurry up and reach the next goal. If I didn’t, I might miss an important opportunity. I felt that if something didn’t happen right away, it might never happen at all. Then I got sick with chronic active Epstein-Barr virus, Lyme disease, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, and possible Bartonella and all that forward motion and achievement came to a grinding halt. I was bedridden, hooked up to an IV, with nothing to do but wait. When would I get better? Why was I not seeing improvement every day?

Unfortunately, it often takes a long time for late-stage tick-borne illnesses to develop (for me, it took eight years to get an accurate diagnosis), which means it can take a long time to get better. Due to Herxheimer’s reactions, trial and error periods to figure out each person’s individual protocol, and setbacks from factors that are both in and out of our control, recovering from tick-borne illness is not a linear process. It can be especially hard to be patient when you feel like you’re taking two steps forward and one step back, or even one step forward and two steps back. Whether you’re three or ninety-three, no one likes to be slowed down.

When days, months, and even years of our lives are lost to illness, we feel increased urgency. We’re afraid that we’re losing precious time, as I discussed in my post “ A Lymie’s View from 39”. Illness-induced FOMO—fear of missing out—naturally manifests as impatience. A natural response to this impatience is to push our bodies to do more than they can so that we don’t miss out entirely. The minute I started to feel a little bit better, I’d go out and spend that energy. And while I enjoyed whatever I did, I paid for it with a flare of symptoms that sent me back to bed for days.

Not waiting caused damage, just as if my friend had not asked her son to wait, she might have dropped the baby or spilled the snack. She told him to wait because she had everyone’s well-being in mind. In just a few minutes, her son got his snack, and no one was hurt in the process. Patience paid off. Still, waiting—especially when it involves resting—goes against everything society has taught us about leading productive, meaningful lives. Though work-life balance has become more valued, busyness and achievement are still seen as badges of honor.

What bothered me most as an impatient patient was that I wasn’t doing anything. A friend who’d spent years recuperating from a traumatic brain injury helped reframe my thinking by telling me, “Your body is working really hard to heal right now. In order to let it do its job, you need to rest.” This realization helped me be more patient and loving with my sick body, more willing to give it what it needed—rather than fight against it—so that I could achieve my long-term goal of health.

Now that I have achieved and retained remission, I still can be impatient; it’s simply my nature. But I have learned to slow down; to pace myself; to trust my doctors, medications, and body; and most of all, to trust the process. I can’t get back the years I lost to illness. But I’m enjoying the ones I have now—which I wouldn’t have gotten if I’d pushed through the sicker years—and it truly does feel like the life I was meant to live is unfolding in its own time. I have to trust that it will continue to do so, as long as I am patient.

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Writer

Jennifer Crystal

Writer

Opinions expressed by contributors are their own. Jennifer Crystal is a writer and educator in Boston. Her memoir about her medical journey is forthcoming. Contact her using her email.

Email: lymewarriorjennifercrystal@gmail.com

Category:

Babesia, Bartonella, Ehrlichiosis, Lyme, Psychological Aspects, Uncategorized, Viruses

Dr. Burrascano on Tick-borne Illness Testing

http://  Approx. 15 Min

IGeneX 2021 Presentation Wisconsin Naturopathic Doctors Association (WNDA)

May 10, 2021

See Dr. Joseph Burrascano presenting on behalf of IGeneX Laboratory at the annual WNDA conference. Topics cover testing for Lyme Disease, Tick-Borne Relapsing Fever, Bartonella, Babesia, Rickettsia, Anaplasma, and Ehrlichia.

Dr. Burrascano discusses the Lyme ImmunoBlot test for early Lyme, validated with CDC test samples, that will identify 93% of cases.

He discussed a 2018 study of over 10,000 patient samples from nearly every state which found patients testing positive for the following pathogens:

  • nearly 38% for Babesia
  • 32% for Lyme borrelia
  • nearly 28% for TBRF borrelia
  • 19% for Bartonella
  • nearly 17% for Anaplasma
  • nearly 13% for Rickettsia
  • nearly 7% for Ehrlichia

Further:

  • 40% tested positive for 2 pathogens
  • 15% for 3
  • 4.6% for 4
  • 0.7% for 5

Category:

Anaplasmosis, Babesia, Bartonella, Ehrlichiosis, Lyme, Rickettsia, Testing, Tickborne Relapsing Fever