Archive for the ‘research’ Category

Opinion: Neurologic Problems in Lyme Disease Also Seen in COVID-19

https://danielcameronmd.com/neurologic-lyme-disease/

OPINION: NEUROLOGIC PROBLEMS IN LYME DISEASE ALSO SEEN IN COVID-19

neurologic lyme disease patient in hospital

Doctors have been describing neurologic problems in Lyme disease patients for decades. Thirty years ago, Lyme encephalopathy and Lyme neuropathy were discussed in the New England Journal of Medicine. Since then other neurologic problems in Lyme disease have been described including Neuropsychiatric Lyme disease and Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS). Now, patients with COVID-19 are reportedly experiencing neurologic problems.

By

In their study, “Frequent neurologic manifestations and encephalopathy‐associated morbidity in Covid‐19 patients,”Liotta and colleagues describe neurologic manifestations in 509 patients with confirmed COVID-19.¹ The authors sought to identify the incidence of neurologic complications in COVID-19 patients.

The study found:

  • More than 8 out of 10 COVID-19 patients suffered from neurologic complications.
  • Nearly 1 out of 3 COVID-19 patients suffered from headaches, encephalopathy, and dizziness, which are also common neurologic symptoms in Lyme disease.
  • Other symptoms included myalgia and fatigue, which occurred in 43% of patients at the onset of illness and in 79% of patients during COVID-19 disease.
  • COVID-19 patients with encephalopathy were less likely to have a good outcome.
  • COVID-19 patients with encephalopathy were hospitalized 3 times longer than COVID-19 patients who did not have encephalopathy.

Author’s Note: Encephalopathy typically refers to altered sensorium and central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction. There is no standardized test for encephalopathy. It appears the authors diagnosed their cases of encephalopathy using clinical judgment.

Encephalopathy has been associated with a poor outcome in other diseases. Some patients with Lyme encephalopathy have had a poor outcome. I have found that patients with this condition can be more challenging to treat.

The authors encourage further research and studies of encephalopathy in patients including those with “Covid-19 who complain of protracted inability to concentrate or decreased short-term memory (referred to as ‘brain fog’).”

READ MORE: Lyme disease manifesting as acute transverse myelitis

There are several potential causes of encephalopathy in this group of COVID-19 patients, which include: systemic disease and inflammation, coagulopathy, direct neuroinvasion by the virus, endotheliitis, post-infectious autoimmune mechanisms, intensive care unit delirium, sedation and analgesia doses, disruption of sleep/wake cycles, and infectious complications.

But due to limitations from the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors were unable to determine the exact cause of their patients’ encephalopathy.

Although I am unable to determine the cause of encephalopathy in Lyme disease patients, I encourage doctors to recognize the condition, so that prompt treatment may occur, improving the chances for a complete recovery.

Screening for encephalopathy

The authors advocate for broader recognition and targeted treatment of encephalopathy. “Broad recognition and screening for encephalopathy as a contributor to disease severity in Covid-19 may have utility in resource allocation and potential to improve patient outcomes,” writes Liotta.

“Prospective cognitive and neurologic-focused evaluations through specialized clinics dedicated to further diagnostic assessment and tailored rehabilitation needs could play a significant role in recovery from this pandemic,” the authors write.

Johnson and colleagues reported better outcomes in Lyme disease patients who were treated by doctors with expertise in treating Lyme disease.²

Related Articles:

Six cases of neurological Lyme disease

Chronic neurological Lyme disease or co-morbid conditions?

Neurological damage/dysfunction found in early Lyme disease patients

References:
  1. Liotta EM, Batra A, Clark JR, et al. Frequent neurologic manifestations and encephalopathy-associated morbidity in Covid-19 patients. Ann Clin Transl Neurol. 2020.
  2. Johnson L, Shapiro M, Stricker RB, Vendrow J, Haddock J, Needell D. Antibiotic Treatment Response in Chronic Lyme Disease: Why Do Some Patients Improve While Others Do Not? Healthcare (Basel). 2020;8(4).

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**Comment**

The concern is people being misdiagnosed with COVID-19 when they have Lyme/MSIDS.

I was just contacted by a patient right here in Wisconsin who tested POSITIVE for Lyme THREE times but was told by the infectious disease doctor it was a “false negative.”  

Wow.

Nothing has changed in Lyme-land.  Infectious disease doctors are typically the worst in my experience regarding tick-borne illness.  They still follow ancient unscientific advice from the CDC that Lyme/MSIDS is hard to catch and easy to treat.  Get to a Lyme literate doctor asap!

For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/05/30/a-tale-of-two-pandemics-lyme-covid-19-dr-bransfield/

Category:

Inflammation, Lyme, research, Viruses

Success of Prescription & Alternative Medicine Lyme Treatments

https://www.treatlyme.net/guide/antibiotic-alternative-medicines-for-lyme

what_works_to_treat_Lyme_feature

Success of Prescription & Alternative Medicine Lyme Treatments

By Dr. Mary Ross

In my Lyme Q&A webinars and my clinical practice at Marty Ross MD Healing Arts, I answer questions about which treatments work best to recover from chronic Lyme.

Which prescription or herbal antibiotics really work for chronic Lyme disease and how long do they take? What about alternative medicine Lyme disease treatments like:

  • Rife machines,
  • stem cell therapy,
  • ozone,
  • hyperbaric oxygen,
  • hyperthermia,
  • supportive oligonucleotide therapy (SOT),
  • low dose immunotherapy (LDI), or
  • IV hydrogen peroxide?

(Go to link for article)

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**Comment**

Dr. Ross states that in the past he would have had to rely solely upon his clinical experience to address the issue of what works in treating Lyme/MSIDS as the NIH stopped funding clinical research on Lyme disease treatments over 15 years ago and only had studies looking at short term antibiotic use of three months or less.

In this article; however, he utilizes not only his clinical experience but that of MyLymeData, a registry of over 12,000 patients who submit information about their experience with treatment.  Learn more or sign up to participate in MyLymeData at lymedisease.org.

In brief:

  • 76% of those that got well used prescription antibiotics but that this took a year or more to accomplish.
  • patients did best when working with an ILADS trained doctor
  • patients found numerous other alternative therapies helpful (see Ross’ article for the breakdown)
  • Dr. Ross states that the results match his clinical experience 
  • Ross also found that hyperthermia benefits lasted only 2-3 months
  • Ross’ review of the science leads him to believe that ozone, hydrogen peroxide and other oxygen therapies do not kill germs due to anti-oxidants in the blood working as killing neutralizers, but that patients often feel better due to helping the mitochondria.  
  • Ross feels stem cell therapy is an expensive disappointment.
  • He finds those using Rife get benefit 35% of the time.
  • He feels CBD from cannabis is not a good germ killer in humans but that it can treat symptoms.
  • He is skeptical of both SOT and LDI.
  • He also lists many other issues Lyme/MSIDS patients experience (please see article)

All in all, a great informative article.  I’m so thankful whenever doctors write about their clinical experience as there is so little out there on what works. The fact that patients and Dr. Ross are stating the same things is also quite helpful and fruitful.  

We may not have NIH funded studies but we have experience on our side.  

For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/02/13/lyme-disease-treatment/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/10/01/new-dapsone-study-breaking-biofilm/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/06/26/new-treatments-for-lyme-disease-on-the-horizon/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/10/14/peer-reviewed-study-confirms-what-we-knew-all-along-longer-antibiotic-treatment-duration-is-associated-with-better-treatment-response-for-lyme-disease/

 

 

Category:

Herbs, Lyme, research, Treatment

Study Finds Two Ways to Improve Lyme Testing

https://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/9/11/366

The Platelet Fraction Is a Novel Reservoir to Detect Lyme Borrelia in Blood

by Victoria P. Sanderson 1, Iain L. Mainprize 1, Lisette Verzijlenberg 1, Cezar M. Khursigara 2 and Melanie K. B. Wills 1,*
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Biology 2020, 9(11), 366; https://doi.org/10.3390/biology9110366
Received: 16 September 2020 / Revised: 23 October 2020 / Accepted: 27 October 2020 / Published: 29 October 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in the Biology of Leptospira, Borrelia and Other Spirochetes)
Simple Summary
To diagnose Lyme disease, a patient’s blood is tested for antibodies that develop as part of the immune response. This can lead to cases being missed or inadequately treated. An ideal test would directly detect the Lyme disease bacteria, Borrelia, to provide better clinical guidance. In this study, we aimed to improve the methods currently used to find Borrelia in human blood, and identified two opportunities for optimization. We demonstrate that the container most commonly used to collect blood (EDTA) decreases Borrelia’s ability to grow, and we identify a superior alternative (citrate). Additionally, using experimentally infected blood, we show that Borrelia is highly concentrated in the platelet fraction, making it an ideal candidate for direct detection. These results lay the foundation for diagnostic test development, which could improve patient outcomes in Lyme disease.
Abstract
Serological diagnosis of Lyme disease suffers from considerable limitations. Yet, the technique cannot currently be replaced by direct detection methods, such as bacterial culture or molecular analysis, due to their inadequate sensitivity. The low bacterial burden in vasculature and lack of consensus around blood-based isolation of the causative pathogen, Borrelia burgdorferi, are central to this challenge. We therefore addressed methodological optimization of Borrelia recovery from blood, first by analyzing existing protocols, and then by using experimentally infected human blood to identify the processing conditions and fractions that increase Borrelia yield. In this proof-of-concept study, we now report two opportunities to improve recovery and detection of Borrelia from clinical samples. To enhance pathogen viability and cultivability during whole blood collection,
  • citrate anticoagulant is superior to more commonly used EDTA.
  • Despite the widespread reliance on serum and plasma as analytes, we found that the platelet fraction of blood concentrates Borrelia, providing an enriched resource for direct pathogen detection by microscopy, laboratory culture, Western blot, and PCR. The potential for platelets to serve as a reservoir for Borrelia and its diagnostic targets may transform direct clinical detection of this pathogen. View Full-Text

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For more:

The CDC deliberately avoids direct detection methods and has suppressed efforts for a direct test for decades.

Around 2003 the WHO encouraged research into microscopy as a direct test for the Borrelia spirochete, the pathogen causing Lyme disease. When a promising new and simple technique was discovered in 2013, it was however violently attacked. Not on the science itself, which is the normal procedure in science, but personally. Now retired professor microbiology Morten Laane was fired after he gave a lecture at a scientific conference in 2014. Moreover, his laboratory was closed down, the website of the scientific journal was hacked and the article disappeared. An exclusive interview (in link).

Lyme advocate and patient Carl Tuttle continues to ask WHY direct detection methods are not used for tick-borne illness.  The CDC continues to give him the run-around:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/05/27/letter-to-cdc-dr-beard-why-isnt-direct-detection-of-lyme-disease-a-priority/

Within this link you will learn of a current lawsuit over this issue by Sin Hang Lee, alleging that employees of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unilaterally terminated a contractual agreement under which the CDC agreed to evaluate a “no false-positive” DNA based Lyme disease test, a currently available test that vastly improves the speed and accuracy of Lyme disease diagnosis for sufferers, and one that is capable of diagnosing all tick-borne borrelial infections.

The CDC’s stranglehold over Lyme testing is also evident with COVID-19 testing.  

I question whether an accurate test for COVID-19 is even possible. It appears it has NOT been singularly isolated and purified and without this important foundation, an accurate test AND vaccine will never be possible:

Category:

Lyme, research, Testing

Bartonella Neuroretinitis From a Ferret and Guinea Pig

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33083230/

Not cat-scratch disease: Bartonella henselae neuroretinitis associated with non-feline pet mammals

Jorge Orellana-Rios 1 2, Juan I Verdaguer-Diaz 1, Gabriela Opazo 2, Belinda C S Leong 3, Claudio Zett 4, R Theodore Smith 5, K Bailey Freund 6 7
Affiliations expand

Free PMC article

Abstract

To describe the ocurrence of Bartonella-associated neuroretinitis secondary to non-feline pet exposure, we retrospectively reviewed medical records and imaging from patients with a clinical and serologic diagnosis of Bartonella henselae (BH). Retinal imaging included color fundus photography, optical coherence tomography (OCT) and fluorescein angiography (FA). Four eyes of two patients with cat-scratch disease were included in this study, with a mean age of 35 years. The mean follow-up was 13 months, after presentation of infectious neuroretinitis. Both patients suffered from bilateral neuroretinitis after direct contact with family pets (ferret and guinea pig).

All patients were treated with a long-term systemic antimicrobial therapy.

Visual acuity in all improved to 20/30 or better at six months. In conclusion, humans may develop cat-scratch disease when they are exposed to Bartonella henselae (BH) in the saliva of infected cats or BH-containing flea feces reaching the systemic circulation through scratches or mucous membranes. As the cat flea (Ctenocephalides felis) may reside on non-feline mammals, Bartonella-associated neuroretinitis may result from contact with other furred family pets.

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For more on neuroretinitis:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/07/10/bartonella-henselae-neuroretinitis-in-patients-without-cat-scratch/  All the patients denied a history of a cat or any animal contact, or of having CSD findings.

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/07/12/bartonella-neuroretinitis/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/04/08/case-series-bartonella-ocular-manifestations/

For more on Bartonella:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/category/bartonella-treatment/

Excerpt:

Fifteen species of gram-negative aerobic Bartonella are known to infect humans; however Dr. Ricardo Maggi’s statement is quite telling, “This case reinforces the hypothesis that any Bartonella species can cause human infection.”  

Category:

Bartonella, Eye Issues, research

Clinical Manifestations Associated with Bartonella Henselae Infection in a Tropical Region

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33021197/

Clinical Manifestations Associated with Bartonella henselae Infection in a Tropical Region

Sze Yen Tay 1, Kevin Freeman 1, Robert Baird 1
Affiliations expand

Abstract

Bartonella henselae is a zoonotic Gram-negative Bacillus associated with self-limited regional lymphadenopathy. In recent decades, an expanding spectrum of clinical manifestations has been described, in part, due to improved diagnostics. However, updated epidemiological data are sparse. We retrospectively reviewed the clinical features of 31 patients with B. henselae infection older than 15 years from 2005 to 2019, in the tropical Top End of Australia. Our annual disease incidence of 1.3 cases per 100,000 population is lower than that in the national database surveillances in the United States, but the hospitalization incidence of 0.9 per 100,000 population in our region is higher than those reported in the literature, with an average length of stay of 9 days. Patients were more commonly male, aboriginal, and aged less than 14 years (median age: 7 years), living in a rural setting with presentation during our monsoon season.

The disease spectrum included:

  • lymph node disease (74%)
  • organ peliosis
  • endocarditis
  • cutaneous lesions
  • parapharyngeal abscess
  • parotitis
  • neurologic and ocular syndromes

Lymph node disease was far commoner in children than the more serious systemic B. henselae infections associated with adults (P = 0.074).

Although no deaths were reported, significant morbidities were observed. Two endocarditis cases presented with glomerulonephritis, and hematological and neurological features mimicking vasculitis, and consequently received immunosuppressants. One case was only diagnosed after representation with serial embolic strokes.

Given the heterogeneity of disease manifestations with nonspecific symptoms and significant consequences, a timely and accurate diagnosis is needed to avoid unnecessary treatments or interventions.

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**Comment**

Please note the endocarditis, which we are told is “rare” with Lyme disease. Bartonella can also bethe causative agent, which many doctors are also not looking for or educated on.

Bartonella mimicking vasculitis has also been seen:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/07/03/case-of-cerebral-vasculitis-due-to-neurobartonellosis/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/01/05/bartonella-endocarditis-masquerading-as-systemic-vasculitis-with-rapidly-progressive-glomerulonephritis/

The HPV vaccine has also caused vasculitis:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/02/16/gardasil-vasculitis-msids/

Category:

Bartonella, research