Archive for the ‘Lyme’ Category

Pfizer and Valneva Move on to Lyme Vaccine

https://apnews.com/article/science-health-ticks-

Major test of first possible Lyme vaccine in 20 years begins

August 8, 2022
Robert Terwilliger, right, of Williamsburg, Pa., who is participating in a Lyme disease vaccine trial at the Altoona Center for Clinical Research, is injected with either the new vaccine or a placebo, by registered nurse Janae Roland, Friday, Aug. 5, 2022, in Duncansville, Pa. Lyme is a growing problem, with cases steadily rising and warming weather helping ticks expand their habitat. (AP Photo/Gary M. Baranec)

DUNCANSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Researchers are seeking thousands of volunteers in the U.S. and Europe to test the first potential vaccine against Lyme disease in 20 years — in hopes of better fighting the tick-borne threat.

Lyme is a growing problem, with cases rising and warming weather helping ticks expand their habitat. While a vaccine for dogs has long been available, the only Lyme vaccine for humans was pulled off the U.S. market in 2002 from lack of demand, leaving people to rely on bug spray and tick checks.

Now Pfizer and French biotech Valneva are aiming to avoid previous pitfalls in developing a new vaccine to protect both adults and kids as young as 5 from the most common Lyme strains on two continents.

(See link for article)

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**Comment**

Here we go again…..

  • True to form, the only time ‘the powers that be’ bring up the fact Lyme/MSIDS is a growing problem is when there’s a vaccine in the pipeline.
  • This “vaccine” targets OspA, the same protein in Lymerix that caused Lyme-like symptoms in many that was supposedly pulled due to “lack of demand.”
  • The 36 hours for transmission is foolishly regurgitated as transmission can and often occurs much quicker, raising the question of whether or not there is even enough time for antibodies to do their supposed magic.
  • Please notice that Pfizer and Valneva are behind this.
    • French pharmaceutical company Valneva joined up with Pfizer (a company which has been fined over 3.5 billion for safety violations, false medical claims, corruption, bribery and has demanded countries put up sovereign assets, bank reserves, military bases and embassy buildings as collateral for expected lawsuits from COVID shots.  This article outlines the fraud and corruption and questions how Pfizer managed to rebrand itself as savior of humanity (one could ask the same question about Bill Gates). If you still trust these companies I have land in Siberia I’d like to sell you.
  • They aim to recruit 6,000 people, including kids as young as five, from endemic areas. Those who enroll will get three shots of either the vaccine or a placebo. It remains to be seen if it is truly a placebo – which should be an inert substance, or another vaccine, which they often do in trials to muddy the waters and make it impossible to truly determine safety.  A year later they will get a booster.
  • They consider this a seasonal vaccine and people will need to continue getting them.
  • They state Lymerix drew “unsubstantiated reports of joint-related side effects.”  I talk to these “unsubstantiated” patients regularly who are still suffering from the effects of Lymerix. Trust me when I say the damage is real, but don’t take my word for it, read about examples here and here.  Hopefully by now it’s become clear that those who suffer vaccine damage are gaslit just like Lyme/MSIDS patients.
    • The dirty little secret is LYMErix was given “permissive” recommendation by the CDC (the injection was only advised for those ‘at risk’, not the whole population). This designation allowed those suffering with adverse reactions to sue the manufacturer, which they did.  I assure you, no such designation will be given this new jab and you will be SOL if you are injured from it.
  • While this vaccine targets 6 Lyme strains, there are other strains out there, and this doesn’t touch coinfections which are often a part of the picture.  Please note the continued singular attention to Lyme with no regard to other infections ticks carry.  This one-microbe, one treatment, one vaccine paradigm is completely wrong but drives nearly all mainstream research.
  • The article mentions the University of Massachusetts work on a “vaccine alternative” – shots of pre-made Lyme-fighting antibodies.
    • Dr. Mark Klempner’s lucrative jabLyme PrEP, is now in Phase 1 trials. Please know the backstory on Klempner. He claims this new shot isn’t a “vaccine;” however, according to thisOspA is still in it, and this study states a wide range of neurological complications have been reported to VAERS after vaccination with OspA including cerebral ischemia, transient ischemic attacks, demyelinating events, optic neuritis, transverse myelitis and non-specific demyelination.
    • Here’s what Dr. Stricker has to say:

OspA:  Another Lyme OspA Vaccine Whitewash 

“The meta-analysis by Zhao and colleagues comes to the conclusion that “the OspA vaccine against Lyme disease is safe and its immunogenicity and efficacy have been verified.” The authors arrive at this sunny conclusion by excluding 99.6% of published articles that demonstrate potential problems with the OspA vaccine. Furthermore, the authors ignore peer-reviewed studies, FDA regulatory meetings and legal proceedings that point to major problems with OspA vaccine safety (1-3). This whitewash bodes ill for future Lyme vaccine candidates because it fosters disregard for vaccine safety among Lyme vaccine manufacturers and mistrust among potential Lyme vaccinees.” ~ Dr. Stricker

  • The article also mentions Yale’s work designing a vaccine that recognizes tick saliva — which in animal testing sparked a skin reaction that made it harder for ticks to hang on and feed.
    • John Aucott is “cloning a bunch of proteins in tick saliva” to replicate tick resistance.  He’s also an adviser to Tarsus Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company which is authorized by the F.D.A. to develop an oral preventative in humans using lotilaner, the active ingredient in Credelio, a veterinary medication prescribed for dogs and cats to prevent fleas and ticks which is targeted to the parasite’s nervous system but supposedly doesn’t have any effect on mammals.
  • This is where the money is – vaccines and seasonal treatments people will purchase time and again.  Notice that nothing is ever said about an accurate test and effective treatments for suffering patients.  Many, including yours truly believe Lyme was pigeonholed by the two principal investigators of the previous Lyme vaccines to fit a simplistic one pathogen paradigm for vaccine development.  This is why they continue to deny chronic/persistent infection despite research to the contrary.

And speaking of money:

    • The FDA in July 2017 issued Valneva a fast-track designation that specifically allows for expedited review of “drugs to treat serious conditions and fill an unmet medical need.”
    • Valneva sold the rights to VLA15 to Pfizer for an upfront cost of $130 million in 2020, at which time the two companies announced a collaboration for the continued development and commercialization of the vaccine.
    • Under the terms of the two companies’ agreement, the first dose in the Phase 2 study triggered an additional $10 million payment from Pfizer to Valneva.
    • According to Fierce Biotech, a successful Phase 3 trial “could give Pfizer a clear run at a growing opportunity” and “offers Pfizer the chance to add a growth driver to its mammoth vaccine unit,” as the number of reported Lyme disease cases in the U.S. has increased threefold since the late 1990s.  Source
  • Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media studies at New York University who has experienced the symptoms of Lyme disease, drew comparisons between the experimental Lyme disease vaccine and the COVID-19 vaccines.

“No doubt the CDC/FDA will bless this Lyme vaccine, regardless of its risks, just as they’ve pushed the COVID ‘vaccines’ for the last two years.

“And their support for this new vaccine is especially perverse, since the CDC et al. have long denied that ‘chronic Lyme’ exists, because its proper treatment would cost more than the insurance carriers want to pay.

“As one who has been battling Lyme for more than 10 years, and at enormous cost, I see no reason to put any trust at all in those authorities, whose long denial of the reality of this condition has done me, and countless others, grievous harm.” ~ Mark Crispin Miller

I couldn’t agree more.
And I’m with Lyme Advocate Carl Tuttle:  No Lyme Vaccine Until persistent infection is acknowledged and fully addressed.

Child With Lyme Diagnosed With Radiculopathy

https://danielcameronmd.com/child-with-lyme-disease-diagnosed-with-radiculopathy/

Child with Lyme disease diagnosed with radiculopathy

lyme-disease-radiculopathy

“Among the signs and the symptoms connected to the presence of neuropathic pain are allodynia (pain due to a stimulus that does not normally provoke pain), hyperalgesia (an increase in the perception of pain generated by a stimulus that causes pain), and paresthesia (a condition that determines the perception of anomalous sensations comparable to needle bites, tingling, itching, reduced, or even loss of sensitivity),” wrote Cavalli and colleagues in the International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology. [1]

A 10-year-old boy presented with fatigue, posterior lower neck pain, and a low-grade fever of 100.8. “The soft tissues of the posterior neck and upper back were tender with allodynia,” wrote Baker and colleagues in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.²

They added, the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of the cervical spine showed “questionable” nerve root enhancement at levels C5-C6 and C6-C7 consistent with radiculitis. The child was discharged from the emergency room with a diagnosis of cervical radiculitis due to viral infection.

Two days later, the child was diagnosed with Lyme disease with a positive IgM and IgG western blot test. The patient’s symptoms resolved following treatment with oral doxycycline.

The authors pointed out that radiculoneuritis due to Lyme disease is not new. “In US children, meningitis and cranial nerve palsy are relatively common in neuroborreliosis, while radiculoneuritis is rare,” wrote the authors.²

They added, “Neuroborreliosis is easier to recognize when facial nerve palsy or meningitis are present with radiculitis since these are classically associated with Lyme.”

“Any patient with painful radiculitis and plausible exposure to potentially infected ticks should have Lyme testing,” the authors concluded.

US Insurance Claims Data Shows Explosive Growth of Lyme Disease

https://www.lymedisease.org/fair-health-lyme-insurance-data/

US insurance claims data shows explosive growth of Lyme disease

From 2007 to 2021, private insurance claim lines with Lyme disease diagnoses rose 357 percent in rural areas and 65 percent in urban areas.

[Editor’s note: “claim lines” are not the same as individual Lyme cases. A claim line is a request for insurance reimbursement. One Lyme patient may have several claim lines, for lab tests, x-rays, etc.]

These and other findings on this tick-borne, bacterial illness were captured in an infographic just released by FAIR Health. The national, independent organization used its database of over 36 billion privately billed healthcare claims to conduct its 15-year analysis of Lyme disease.

This analysis builds upon a previous FAIR Health infographic that studied 10 years of Lyme disease data. Click here for the infographic released today.

Rural and urban differences

The infographic reveals key differences in prevalence of Lyme disease when comparing rural and urban areas. From 2016 to 2021, claim lines with Lyme disease diagnoses increased 60 percent in rural areas and 19 percent in urban areas, with diagnoses peaking nationally in June and July of each year.

During these summer months, rural areas, on average, had a greater share of claim lines associated with Lyme disease diagnoses than urban areas. From November to April, however, claim lines with Lyme disease diagnoses occurred more often in urban than rural areas.

Geographic distribution

In 2017, the states with the greatest proportion of claim lines with Lyme disease diagnoses as a percentage of all diagnoses in the state, from highest to lowest, were New Jersey, Connecticut, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Given that Lyme disease has been historically associated with the Northeast and upper Midwest, the status of North Carolina as the state with the third highest percentage of Lyme disease claim lines in 2017 suggested marked expansion to a new region. By 2021, however, North Carolina had dropped from the list.

The top states in 2021, from highest to lowest, were New Jersey, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Maine, which was not previously on the list of top five states for Lyme disease claim lines, assumed third place in 2021, suggesting a growing presence of the tick-borne illness in the state. Connecticut and Vermont switched places, with Vermont emerging as number two and Connecticut dropping to number five.

Long-term symptoms of Lyme disease

Although Lyme disease is treatable with antibiotics, some Lyme patients later develop conditions with long-term symptoms, such as fatigue, muscle and joint pain and cognitive issues. Such conditions have been linked to post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, sometimes called chronic Lyme disease.

To identify later diagnoses associated with Lyme disease, FAIR Health examined a statistically significant cohort of individuals in its private insurance claims database from 2017 to 2021, comparing the prevalence of certain diagnoses among Lyme patients to all patients in the cohort.

The analysis found that diagnoses such as malaise and fatigue and soft-tissue-related issues were more common among Lyme patients than among the total patient population. Across all age groups, patients with Lyme disease were generally more likely to have these apparently associated diagnoses than all patients in the cohort.

FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd stated, “Lyme disease remains a growing public health concern. FAIR Health will continue to use its repository of claims data to provide actionable and relevant insights to healthcare stakeholders seeking to better understand the ongoing rise of Lyme disease cases.”

This is the third study FAIR Health has conducted on Lyme disease, the first appearing in an infographic released in 2017 and the second in a white paper published in 2019.

About FAIR Health

FAIR Health is a national, independent nonprofit organization. It possesses the nation’s largest collection of private healthcare claims data, which includes over 36 billion claim records and is growing at a rate of over 2 billion claim records a year.

SOURCE OF PRESS RELEASE:  fairhealth.org

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For more:

Shania Twain’s Netflix Documentary Discusses “Scary” Lyme Symptoms

https://www.lymedisease.org/shania-twain-netflix-lyme-doc/

Shania Twain’s Netflix documentary discusses “scary” Lyme symptoms

In a new Netflix documentary, “Not Just a Girl,” country pop mega-star Shania Twain discloses details of her harrowing experience with Lyme disease.

The July 26 release of the film has prompted a lot of media coverage about the Canadian-born singer of such hits as “Man! You Make Me Feel Like a Woman” and “You’re Still the One.”

Watch what Good Morning America had to say.

Here are samples of other news coverage.

Today:  Shania Twain details Lyme disease symptoms: ‘I was afraid I was going to fall off the stage

Popsugar:  Shania Twain on Battle With Lyme Disease: “I Thought I’d Lost My Voice Forever”

Yahoo News:  Shania Twain opens up about ‘scary’ Lyme disease symptoms – what is the condition?

For more:

In Order To Prove How Sick I am, I Had to Make Myself Sicker

https://www.lymedisease.org/jamison-hill-prove-i-am-sick/

In order to prove how sick I am, I had to make myself sicker

By Jamison Hill

Aug. 1, 2022

The last few months have been rough. I have been going through a brutal intake interview for In-Home Supportive Services, which provides me with caregiving hours. The intake interview did not go well.

Throughout the interview, I was required to demonstrate, both verbally and physically, how sick I am and the limitations that my illness imposes upon me. The irony of this is that in order to prove how sick I am, I had to make myself sicker.

I had to speak more than I normally speak. I had to move more than I normally do. I had to use emotional and cognitive energy that I normally reserve for other things.

The case worker performing the interview didn’t seem to understand my illness. I tried to explain that my illness is not a steady thing. It’s unlike disabilities that are the same from one day to the next. My illness varies from day to day.

On good days, I might be able to sit up and even take a few steps. On bad days, I’ll be lucky to be able to get out of bed and take my mobility scooter to the bathroom. Standing up is out of the question on bad days. And lately, because of the stress and exertion of this intake process, there have been an exceedingly high number of bad days.

A demeaning and detrimental process

What bothers me most about the process of proving how sick I am, is that it is demeaning to my psyche and detrimental to my health. If someone is sick, they shouldn’t have to prove it. And they definitely shouldn’t have to make themself sicker to prove it.

No one should have to put their illness on display like an exhibit at a science fair. But because many chronic illnesses are invisible — the symptoms are not clearly noticeable — we often have to do just that.

We have to push ourselves to the brink of exhaustion just so someone can catch a glimpse of what we’re going through. And then whoever is observing us carries on with their life while we are confined to bed for days or weeks, recovering from proving the legitimacy of our illness.

It reminds me of a story Michael J. Fox told in one of his memoirs. He was reflecting on a time when he testified before Congress about his Parkinson’s disease. And in doing so, he chose not to take the medications that improved his condition and made it manageable, more or less.

Because of this decision, his illness was on full display for the politicians in the room and the people watching on TV. His hands were shaking. His voice was wavering. It was scary, but that was the reality of his illness.

Because Fox had not taken his medication, some commentators said that he was putting on an act, that he wasn’t being truthful about his illness. In reality, he wasn’t just being truthful, he was risking his health for the sake of being truthful. He was giving people a glimpse at the worst of his illness and making himself sicker in order to do so.

More people believed me when I was sicker

Six years ago, I was completely bedridden — unable to lift my head off a pillow, too weak to eat or speak. Now my health has improved some, and I can get out of bed and speak for short amounts of time. But when it comes to proving how sick I am, I have never struggled more.

When I was at my sickest, it was easier to show others how sick I was. More people believed me because no one in their right mind would go without speaking or eating just so people thought they were sick. No one would stay confined to bed literally all the time just to get sympathy or money or whatever. But now that I can get out of bed, things are more complicated.

At first glance, it’s not always obvious how sick I am. But if you observe me for any significant amount of time, it’s clear to see that I am not a healthy person. You won’t see me eating in restaurants and going to concerts and seeing movies and watching ball games and swimming in oceans and hiking mountains and running on beaches and flying in planes and getting married and having children and doing all of the other things I would do if I were healthy.

All the proof I need

And that, my friends, is all the proof I need. I so badly want to live a healthy life. I want to be active. I want to move. I want to do everything I can as much as I can. And yet, that mentality is at odds with my illness. To minimize my symptoms, I must rest. I must ask for help. I must delay. I must do things later, when I am feeling better.

Even still, here I am, more than a decade into my illness and still having to prove that I’m sick. It’s a soul-crushing, pride-swallowing process that won’t stop as long as my illness exists. I hate it. But perhaps one day it will stop, and I’ll no longer have strangers judging how sick I am.

Jamison Hill has written about his struggles with myalgic encephalomyelitis and Lyme disease in such publications as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, as well as in his memoir When Force Meets Fate. This article is republished from his blog, Jamison Writes.