Archive for the ‘Lyme’ Category

LDN Webinar

https://www.belmarpharmasolutions.com/resources/clinician-resources/clinician-library/the-ldn-book-volume-two/

**Please note this webinar occurred last year; however, they are making it available to all now.  Just go to the link, fill out info. and you will be directed to the Webinar that already took place.**

The LDN Book: Volume Two

October 12, 2020

By: Belmar Pharmacy

Belmar Pharmacy is presenting the launch of Author and Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) Advocate, Linda Elsegood’s latest book, The LDN Book Volume 2.

Dr. Angela DeRosa, Belmar Pharma Solutions Medical Director and Tracy Crawford, Director of Customer Experience, speak with authors Linda Elsegood, Darin Ingels ND, FAAM, Olga Cortez MD, and Leonard Weinstock MD about their LDN expertise and their contributions to the book.

Also hear from, Samantha Lebsock, PharmD at Belmar Pharmacy – she will share her extensive knowledge of LDN from a compounding pharmacist perspective. 

This webinar is engaging for both practitioners and patients interested in learning more about LDN and how to get their hands on The LDN Book Volume 2 and all it has to offer.

Conversations contain some of the reasons practitioners prescribe LDN, including:

  • Autoimmune
  • Women’s Health
  • Lyme Disease
  • Thyroid
  • Chronic Skin Conditions
  • Gut Health

This webinar is intended for patients and prescribers. If you would like to watch the webinar, please fill out in the top link. You will be re-directed to the recording after the successful completion of the form.

For more on LDN:

Category:

Activism, Inflammation, Lyme, Supplements, Treatment

Can Lyme Disease Cause Bone Loss?

https://danielcameronmd.com/lyme-disease-bone-loss/

Can Lyme disease cause bone loss?

man with lyme disease having leg bone examined by doctor

Arthritis is a well-known manifestation of Lyme disease. And although studies have detected Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb) by culture and PCR in bone and marrow of humans and dogs,¹ little is known about the effects of Bb infection on bone tissue, outside articular surfaces.

By

In a 2003 case report, “Bone marrow manifestation of Lyme disease (Lyme Borreliosis),” Kvasnicka et al.² describe a 35-year-old man, who presented with fever, night sweats, inguinal lymph node enlargement and splenomegaly. He also exhibited neurologic symptoms including hyperkinesis and ataxia.

Based on results from a lumbar puncture, doctors initially suspected the patient had infectious meningoencephalitis. However, a bone marrow trephine biopsy was also performed and revealed several small- to intermediate-sized epithelioid granulomas, according to the authors.

“Bone marrow abnormalities have rarely been reported in Lyme borreliosis. In this patient the bone marrow lesions had a characteristic ring-like appearance” which is occasionally seen with infectious diseases.

Western blot testing showed “an increased IgM antibody titre for Borrelia burgdorferi indicating a recent infection,” writes Kvasnicka et al.

The patient was treated with antibiotics and recovered.

The authors suggest “In patients with neurological symptoms, fever and granulomatous myelitis, an early disseminated infection with Borrelia burgdorferi, should be considered in the differential diagnosis and specific serological tests should be performed.”

Lyme disease induces bone loss in mice

In their article “The Lyme Disease Pathogen Borrelia burgdorferi Infects Murine Bone and Induces Trabecular Bone Loss,” investigators provide the “first evidence that B. burgdorferi infection induces bone loss in mice and suggest that this phenotype results from inhibition of bone building rather than increased bone resorption.”

The authors examined “whether B. burgdorferi infection affects bone health in mice,” and point out that “bone pathologies are observed in diseases associated with other spirochete bacteria, including syphilis and periodontitis.”

“Bone pathologies are observed in diseases associated with other spirochete bacteria, including syphilis and periodontitis.”

Other studies have found that long bones from mice infected with Borrelia burgdorferi tended to be more brittle than bones of mock-infected controls.

The authors found that “B. burgdorferi infection in mice causes a level of osteopenia in the trabecular regions of long bones that would be considered a clinically significant finding in humans.”

However, “structural and biomechanical properties of cortical bone were not affected by infection.”

Related Articles:

TMJ arthritis triggered by Lyme disease

Lyme disease protein tricks immune system, ignites arthritis

Lyme arthritis following an operation: 5 cases

References:
  1. Tang TT, Zhang L, Bansal A, Grynpas M, Moriarty TJ. The Lyme Disease Pathogen Borrelia burgdorferi Infects Murine Bone and Induces Trabecular Bone Loss. Infect Immun. 2017;85(2):e00781-16. Published 2017 Jan 26. doi:10.1128/IAI.00781-16
  2. Kvasnicka HM, Thiele J, Ahmadi T. Bone marrow manifestation of Lyme disease (Lyme Borreliosis). Br J Haematol. 2003 Mar;120(5):723. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2141.2003.04084.x. PMID: 12614200.

Category:

Lyme, research

When Crossfit Crosses Paths With Lyme Disease

https://www.lymedisease.org/crossfit-crosses-paths-lyme/

TOUCHED BY LYME: When Crossfit crosses paths with Lyme disease

Sept. 17, 2021

CrossFit is a competitive sport that incorporates elements of weightlifting, gymnastics, and other vigorous athletic endeavors. Suffice it to say, people who excel at this must be in tiptop shape and full of energy.

That’s why it’s so remarkable that 17-year-old Mallory O’Brien, named CrossFit’s 2021 “Rookie of the Year,” has recently experienced a prolonged and debilitating case of Lyme disease.

According to an article by Nicole Payton on the CrossFit Games website:

“For more than a year, O’Brien suffered from severe headaches and exhaustion before she was diagnosed with Lyme disease. She recalled having two tick bites around ages 10 or 11, but it wasn’t until right before the 2019 CrossFit Open, when she was 15, that she started feeling the effects of the disease.…Unable to train as she was accustomed to, let alone compete in 2020, she made the wise decision to pull back the throttle, and allow her body and mind time to recover.”

Mallory said her headaches were “severe, daily, and lasting all day.”

How did she do it?

How did she recover and return to such a physically demanding sport? Mallory attributes it to “a combination of focused treatment, sound nutrition, and functional fitness.”

Furthermore, she said, “I became very aware of how nutrition and vitamins can heal our bodies and learned to look at food labels so that I know what I’m putting into my body. I’m really into healing my body naturally now and understanding the science behind nutrition and natural medicine.”

Payton’s article continues: “She has demonstrated an enormous amount of resilience in her recovery from Lyme disease, and she has a few words of encouragement for anyone suffering from the disease and losing hope.”

“Never give up! I was told so many times that there was nothing wrong with me, or that they couldn’t explain my symptoms,” O’Brien said.

“It felt like no one was listening. My mom and I became obsessed with finding an answer. We knew there was no way this was not explainable. Trust your instincts. You know your body better than anyone! Find a doctor that listens to you and is committed to helping you.”

Click here to read the whole article.

Note: The photos accompanying this blog are from Mallory’s Instagram page.

TOUCHED BY LYME is written by Dorothy Kupcha Leland, LymeDisease.org’s Vice-president and Director of Communications. She is co-author of When Your Child Has Lyme Disease: A Parent’s Survival Guide. Contact her at dleland@lymedisease.org .

Category:

Activism, Lyme

The Evidence for Persistent Lyme & Promising New Treatments

https://www.lymedisease.org/embers-persistent-lyme/

The evidence for persistent Lyme and promising new treatments

by Kris Newby
Communications Director, Invisible International

Monica Embers, PhD, director of the vector-borne disease research center at Tulane University School of Medicine, summarizes evidence that suggests that Lyme bacteria can survive long after standard treatment protocols in a new online medical education course. She also discusses promising new treatment strategies for eradicating these bacteria.

Emerging evidence from animal studies suggest that the Lyme disease bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, is a clever trickster that uses multiple strategies to evade the immune system and survive long after an onslaught of the recommended course of antibiotics. This begs the question—Are our current Lyme treatment protocols all wrong?

In the accredited continuing medical education course, “Antibiotic efficacy for treatment of Lyme disease,” Monica Embers, associate professor of microbiology and immunology and a leading expert in investigating B. burgdorferi infections in a nonhuman primate model, summarizes current Lyme treatment protocols, key studies on antibiotic efficacy, and new strategies aimed at curing the infection.

“It’s clear from the cumulative evidence that persistent Lyme disease is a common occurrence and that we urgently need to explore more effective treatment strategies,” said Embers.

This new 32-minute course, part of Invisible International’s Montecalvo Platform for Tick-Borne Illness Education, has been approved for 0.5 CME credit by the American Academy of Family Physicians. Each CME course includes a list of studies cited in the lecture.

Doxycycline doesn’t clear Lyme bacteria

One of the more surprising revelations in the lecture is that doxycycline, the drug of choice for treating adults with Lyme disease, doesn’t clear all of the causative bacteria. It only slows their proliferation, disrupting cell-wall creation as each forms a copy of itself by splitting into two. When the Lyme bacteria sense doxycycline, they shapeshift into spherical, dormant forms called persister cells, so they can wait out the chemical storm.

Dr. Embers backs up these claims with a series of thoughtfully designed experiments on nonhuman primates, our closest mammalian relatives. In one study, she treated five rhesus macaques with a 28-day course of doxycycline and five without. A year after the trial began, nine out of the 10 macaques, both treated and untreated, showed signs of ongoing illness and live Lyme spirochetes were isolated. In addition, those that received doxycycline had more bacteria in the brain.

The study’s conclusion:

“We observed evidence of persistent, intact, metabolically-active B. burgdorferi after antibiotic treatment of disseminated infection and showed that persistence may not be reflected by maintenance of specific antibody production by the host.”

Simply put, treating with doxycycline didn’t seem to be a cure, and the Lyme bacteria appear to have ways of suppressing antibody production so that it can fly under the radar of the immune system.

Given this evidence, why does the medical establishment still recommend doxycycline as a front-line Lyme treatment? One reason is that doxycycline appears to be effective at most early infections, along with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and anaplasmosis, other serious tick-borne diseases that are often mistaken for Lyme disease in the early stages.

Overuse of mice as test subjects?

Embers also says that treatment study results may be skewed by the overuse of mice as test subjects. Mice are cheap, but they’re lousy stand-ins for humans. They’ve evolved alongside ticks to serve as a living holding tanks for the Lyme bacteria, so they don’t get as sick as humans when infected.

Lyme disease is the fastest vector-borne illness in the United States, with an estimated 476,000 new cases a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Approximately 10 to 20% of those treated with antibiotics go on to experience disabling long-haul symptoms, such as severe fatigue, joint/muscle pain, brain fog, and neurologic symptoms.

There have been no human treatment studies published in over 20 years, and only 0.30% of the National Institutes of Health Lyme research budget has been focused on human treatment studies in the last five years (2015-2019).

At the end of lecture, Dr. Embers cited several lab studies (bacteria-in-a-dish) and animal studies showing that a cocktail of three antibiotics are highly effective in eradicating the Lyme bacteria. (This study from Johns Hopkins found that a combination of daptomycin, cefoperazone and doxycycline was effective in eradicating persister cells.) But of course, clinical trials are needed to validate these findings.

Tick Bytes

One of the ways Invisible International is working to accelerate the movement of treatment evidence to patient care is by launching Tick Bytes, a centralized clinical data repository that provides quality de-identified tick-borne illness patient data to researchers nationwide.

Researchers can mine this data using advanced biostatistical methods to discover symptom profiles for mixed infections and treatment regimens that work. With this precision medicine approach, more quality evidence will reach physicians, insurers, and the government. This in turn will improve diagnostics and treatment options, leading to better outcomes, insurance coverage, and more sophisticated understanding of tick-borne diseases. Invisible is currently looking for funding for 10 data collection sites.

Dr. Embers’ CME course was funded by the Montecalvo Platform for Tick-Borne Illness Education, through Invisible International, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation dedicated to reducing the suffering associated with invisible illnesses and social marginalization through innovation, education, and data-driven change projects. You can sign up to receive news and updates on our website.

Invisible International is a 501c3 that aims to solve challenges related to tick-borne illness through research and physician education. Its core team includes health care providers and scientists specializing in Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Pathology, Pharmacy, Psychology, and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, as well as innovation and healthcare leaders.

Click here for more information about Invisible International.

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For more:

Category:

Lyme, Treatment

Have We Finally Reached a Lyme Research Tipping Point?

https://www.lymedisease.org/lyme-research-tipping-point/

Sept. 16, 2021

If there were such a thing as an Olympic competition for Lyme research, I have a pretty good idea who would be on Team USA.

A recent paper entitled “Recent Progress in Lyme Disease and Remaining Challenges,” co-authored by 31 researchers from 19 separate institutions, reads like an all-star lineup of Lyme disease researchers.

The authors include many names familiar to the Lyme community including: Monica Embers, PhD, John Aucott, MD, Kim Lewis, PhD, Ed Breitschwerdt, DVM, DACVIM, Nicole Baumgarth, DVM, PhD, and Brian Fallon, MD.

The lead author, Jason Bobe MSc, is an associate professor in the genetics and genome science department at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

Bobe is part of Mount Sinai’s Resilience Project. It seeks to discover why some people are more able than others to resist or recover from certain illnesses, including Lyme disease.

Recent advancements in Lyme disease

This paper does an excellent job of summarizing the advancements in Lyme and tick-borne diseases over the past five years. It also identifies gaps in knowledge, remaining challenges, the need for additional funding and further research.

The paper paints a comprehensive picture of what causes acute Lyme disease, including immune activation, dissemination, and inflammation.  In addition, it looks at newly discovered biological markers that may aid in the development of improved diagnostics.

Included is a detailed description of several potential causes of symptoms of Lyme disease that persist after standard treatment. The authors propose that the most salient hypotheses are “persistence of infection or antigenic debris, persistence of inappropriate immune activation and inflammation, or some combination of these.”

Topics covered in the publication includes the weakness of current standard Lyme disease diagnostics and a review of several emerging diagnostic assays. Included in the section on treatment is a review of recent drug discoveries and complementary therapies, including natural and botanical medicines.

Direct detection test for Lyme?

Another co-author, Brandon Jutras PhD, is an assistant professor of biochemistry in the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. His team is working to develop a new direct diagnostic test for acute Lyme disease.

In 2019, Jutras discovered that Borrelia burgdorferi sheds peptidoglycan, a mesh-like substance that forms the cell wall of the bacteria once it invades the human body. Although all bacteria have peptidoglycan, many do not shed it.

“Current Lyme disease diagnostics are indirect, meaning that the tests are detecting antibodies produced by the human in response to the infection, rather than detecting the bacteria itself,” said Jutras. “This method is prone to error and relies on the individual’s immune system, which can take weeks to make enough antibodies to detect, not to mention that everyone’s immune system is different.”

“We are trying to develop and critically test a procedure whereby we detect peptidoglycan, which is a unique piece of the bacterium that causes Lyme disease,” said Jutras. “The piece is a specific and abundant fragment that may act as a direct biomarker for an active infection and, in theory, be detectable within hours of transmission from an infected tick.”

Other Lyme research

Portions of the paper include research done by the authors. Some highlights include:

  1. Monica Embers showing Lyme persists after a standard course of antibiotics, Lyme spirochetes in multiple organs after antibiotics, and Lyme spirochetes in an autopsied brain (despite treatment).
  2. John Aucott, ongoing research as Director of the Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Research Center, including examining why brain inflammation persists after Lyme disease treatment.
  3. Kim Lewis’ work on eradicating drug-tolerant infections as well as his new investigation into the gut microbiome as it pertains to persistent Lyme disease.
  4. Brain Fallon’s decades of research on neurological Lyme which will be continuing at Columbia University’s new Cohen Center for Health and Recovery from Tick-Borne Diseases.
  5. Nicole Baumgarth’s research into how Lyme spirochetes evade the immune system.
  6. Ed Breitschwerdt and Richard Maggi’s decades of work on developing treatment for Bartonella and other co-infections.

The authors also encourage collaborative efforts like that being done by co-author Liz Horn, PhD, the principal investigator at the Lyme Disease Biobank (LDB). The LDB was created by the Bay Area Lyme Foundation and has partnered with the National Disease Research Interchange as well as LymeDisease.org’s MyLymeData research project.

Need for federal funding

The authors highlight the urgent need for adequate federal funding to “support advancement in the scientific and clinical understanding of the disease, or to develop and evaluate innovative approaches for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.”

The paper reads like a summary of all 14 of the previous Tick-borne Disease Working Group (TBDWG) sub-committee reports generated by the 2018 and 2020 working groups. If you’ve read any of the TBDWG sub-committee reports (some of them over 100+ pages long), you know this summary was a heavy lift.

Monica Embers was recently appointed to the 2021-2022 TBDWG. I hope this paper will be required reading for the 13 other members!

“It is very exciting to have the opportunity to shape future funding priorities regarding tick-borne disease research and response,” said Embers. “I’d like to see more of an emphasis on the neurological impacts of Lyme disease and a renewed commitment to improving how we diagnose and treat the disease.”

Outline

To summarize the entire paper would be difficult as it is over 80 pages long, with nearly 350 references, and swimming in deep science. If you are interested in a particular topic, I have provided an outline and a link to the paper below.

The topics included in this paper include:

  1. Introduction
  2. Clinical and Translational Medicine
    1. Diagnosis
      1. Exposure to Ticks
      2. Serological Testing
      3. Signs and Symptoms
      4. EM Lesion
      5. Direct Detection of Bb
      6. Emerging Diagnostics
    2. Treatment
      1. Drug Discovery and Preclinical Studies
      2. Complementary Therapies
    3. Well-Defined LD Patient Subgroups With Posttreatment Sequelae
      1. Antibiotic Refractory Lyme Arthritis
      2. PTLD
  3. Fundamental Knowledge
    1. Genomic Insights From Borreliaceae Lineages
    2. Proteomic Insights From Borreliaceae Lineages
    3. Transmission of Bb via Ixodes Spp. Vectors
    4. Pathogenesis
      1. Immune Activation and Inflammation in Untreated LD
      2. Inflammation and Immune Dysregulation Among Patients With Persistent LD
        1. CRP in Patients With Persistent Symptoms Following Treatment
        2. IFN-y and Antibiotic-Refractory Lyme arthritis patients
        3. CCL19 Among PTLD Patients
        4. IL-23 Among European PTLD Patients
        5. Autoantigens and Self-Reactivity In LA
    5. Persistence
      1. Persistent Antigenic Debris
      2. Persistent Infection
  4. Prevention
    1. Ecological Prevention
    2. Human Vaccine
    3. Field Building
      1. Biorepositories and Research Cohorts
        1. Lyme Disease Biobank
        2. Lyme Disease Research
        3. Long Island Outdoor Worker Cohort
      2. Data Repositories
        1. LymeMIND Commons
  5. Discussion
READ THE PAPER

Reference

Bobe JR, Jutras BL, Horn EJ, Embers ME, Bailey A, Moritz RL, Zhang Y, Soloski MJ, Ostfeld RS, Marconi RT, Aucott J, Ma’ayan A, Keesing F, Lewis K, Ben Mamoun C, Rebman AW, McClune ME, Breitschwerdt EB, Reddy PJ, Maggi R, Yang F, Nemser B, Ozcan A, Garner O, Di Carlo D, Ballard Z, Joung H-A, Garcia-Romeu A, Griffiths RR, Baumgarth N and Fallon BA (2021) Recent Progress in Lyme Disease and Remaining Challenges. Front. Med. 8:666554. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2021.666554

LymeSci is written by Lonnie Marcum, a Licensed Physical Therapist and mother of a daughter with Lyme. In 2019-2020, she served on a subcommittee of the federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group. Follow her on Twitter: @LonnieRhea  Email her at: lmarcum@lymedisease.org.

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**Comment**

I’m an optimistic person by nature; however, I have little hope for true change in Lyme-land.  All we have to do is look around at the continuing censorship, persecution, and real misinformation about COVID to see there are powerful forces at work that just don’t seem to step down despite protests, good scientific information, and facts.

Category:

Lyme, research