Archive for the ‘research’ Category

Tick-Borne Infection Revealing Human HIV Positivity in Young Adult

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6804791/

Tick- borne infection revealing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positivity in a young adult

Murat Hasanreisoglu,a,b,∗ Sarakshi Mahajan,b Pinar Cakar Ozdal,c Kenan Hizel,d Ahmet Yucel Ucgul,a Merih Onol,eand Quan Dong Nguyenb
Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer

Abstract

Purpose

To describe a patient whose retinal findings suggestive of tick-borne disease but evaluations led to early diagnosis and treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection.

Observation

A young patient presented with bilateral uveitis, branch retinal artery occlusion and retinal findings suggestive of infective/inflammatory etiology. Laboratory evaluations revealed that the patient was positive for co-infection with Rickettsia conorii and Bartonella henselae. On further investigation, the patient tested positive for HIV infection. The patient was treated with doxycycline as well as highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) to control both opportunistic infections as well as HIV infection.

Conclusion and Importance

Patients with HIV infection are at risk for multiple, simultaneous opportunistic co-infections, including those with tick-borne diseases.

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**Comment**

A great example of how infections can drive viruses. Mainstream medicine is still hopelessly in the dark on the seriousness of tick borne infections and the polymicrobial nature of them:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/10/30/study-shows-lyme-msids-patients-infected-with-many-pathogens-and-explains-why-we-are-so-sick/

 

Category:

Bartonella, research, Rickettsia, Testing, Treatment

What Makes Lyme Tick?

https://exelmagazine.org/article/what-makes-lyme-tick/  Full Article Here

By Sonja Sherwood

What Makes Lyme Tick?

Ticks carry a multitude of bacteria that can harm human health, and a College of Medicine doctoral student is identifying all of them, in hopes of giving physicians ammunition against Lyme disease.

Lying inside a freezer in Drexel’s College of Medicine are 500 dead, mourned by no one.

The deer ticks, dog ticks, lone star ticks and other tiny parasites in the diminutive morgue traveled from nearly every state in the country to reach this resting place. They arrived in baggies or cookie tins or what-have-you, scooped from meadows and forests by helpful volunteers responding to a “call for specimens” on Drexel’s website that was posted by Kayla Socarrás, a doctoral student studying microbiology and immunology. Each tick contains multitudes of smaller organisms — a grab-bag of the pathogenic bacteria that make tick bites so hazardous.

Throughout 2018, Socarrás studied what makes these critters tick…..

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**Comment**

Great article worth reading on researchers who admit the following:

  • A single tick bite can infect you with numerous pathogens capable of persistent infection resulting in permanent illness that can mimic other diseases like MS.
  • Current testing utilizes “one strain of borrelia that was isolated 30 years ago — based on science that hasn’t kept up with contemporary understandings of how bacteria evolve.”
  • The classic EM rash is only present in less than half of all cases. The ranges actually go from 27-80%, yet we’ve been told for decades you must have it to have Lyme.
  • Lyme is extremely pernicious due to its ability to evade antibiotics and the immune system through creating biofilms and by “swapping genes or going dormant.” “A single strain of bacteria might have 1,200 genes out of a possible 5,400 genes available at the species level.”
  • Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme disease can’t be cultured. And “Once the spirochete gains a foothold in the brain or other organs, it’s almost impossible to defeat.”
  • The article states, “One physician was able to reverse Alzheimer’s dementia in three patients who he determined had Lyme disease, by putting them on high-dose antibiotics. A psychiatrist noticed that some of the children referred to her had both bipolar disorder and Lyme disease; on a hunch, she tested all of her bipolar patients and determined that 90 percent were Lyme positive — she began treating them with antibiotics. Ehrlich recounts a case of a famous Duke oncologist with congestive heart failure; after he received a heart transplant, he was able to determine that the muscles of his heart had been massively infected with Borrelia burgdorferi.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category:

Genetic Mutations, Lyme, research, Testing, Ticks

Yale “Dream Team” Lyme Disease Treatment Recipe

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Courtesy: Microbiologist Tom Grier

Yes, you are reading this correctly – the boneheads at Yale state that you shouldn’t get treatment even if you have the EM rash (which is indicative of Lyme disease), and test positive on tests, and that you should just wait around on your laurels to get worse.

There are still far too many noodle-headed doctors still following this antiquated and unscientific advice.
Please remember, some of the sickest patients NEVER test positive on tests which look for antibodies.

And while the EM rash is indicative of Lyme, many, many never get it. No one I work with gets the rash. The graph from Lyme Disease Organization shows those getting the rash range from 27-80% – hardly a sure thing. https://www.lymedisease.org/lymepolicywonk-how-many-of-those-with-lyme-disease-have-the-rash-estimates-range-from-27-80-2/

Don’t trust mainstream medicine with tick-borne illness. Get to an ILADS trained health professional.

 

Category:

Activism, Lyme, research, Treatment

When Do Ticks Quest, Waiting For Their Next Blood Meal? (Hint: It Has Nothing To Do With the Climate)

https://danielcameronmd.com/when-do-ticks-quest-next-meal/

WHEN DO TICKS QUEST, WAITING FOR THEIR NEXT MEAL?

By

When ticks are questing, they hold onto leaves, grass and other objects with their third and fourth pair of legs. They hold their front legs outstretched, waiting to climb onto the host as it passes by. But, when do ticks quest?

So far, research has focused on questing behavior primarily in the laboratory.

“Ticks must balance the need to quest for blood meal hosts with the risk of desiccation, all on a fixed energy budget,” writes Thomas from Washington State University. ¹

But Thomas and his team wanted to investigate questing patterns in a natural habitat.

“We measured questing activity of nymphs and larvae throughout the day and night and over several weeks in enclosures across a range of suitable tick habitats within a site in the Northeast,” he writes.

A new study finds some ticks quest most of the time, regardless of weather conditions or time of day. 

They found that the activity of nymphs increased slightly during dawn and dusk, the opposite of larvae. But their findings could not be replicated at other sites. Questing behavior was also not impacted by temperature, relative humidity, light-dark cycles and energy reserves.
“Rather it appears a fraction of ticks were questing most of the time, regardless of conditions,” he writes. “Our study suggests neither climatic conditions or light-dark cycles have appreciable influence on tick questing behavior.”

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For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/08/13/study-shows-lyme-not-propelled-by-climate-change/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/11/07/ticks-on-the-move-due-to-migrating-birds-and-photoperiod-not-climate-change/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/06/17/ontario-public-health-officials-called-out-on-shoddy-biased-research-utilizing-an-erroneous-climate-change-model-to-program-a-futuristic-tick-problem/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/11/17/uw-madison-phd-in-ecological-climatology-climate-change-computer-models-fudged-except-russian-model/

Category:

research, Ticks

Suspect Lyme Carditis? Start Empiric Antibiotics, Case Report Suggest (And Lyme Carditis is Not Rare!)

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/920145

Suspect Lyme Carditis? Start Empiric Antibiotics, Case Report Suggest

By Jennifer Garcia

October 21, 2019

Lyme carditis, caused by infection with the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, is a rare but potentially fatal complication that may be prevented with rapid empiric antibiotic treatment.

In a new case report, public health officials describe two patients from areas where Lyme disease is endemic. The patients presented with vague, nonspecific signs and electrocardiogram (ECG) changes suspicious for Lyme carditis.

Although borreliosis was suspected and was tested for, neither patient received antibiotic therapy while awaiting test results, and both subsequently died.

“Guidelines recommend simultaneous initiation of empirical antibiotic therapy and Lyme serologic testing when Lyme carditis is suspected. Lyme carditis can progress rapidly, and waiting for confirmatory diagnostic therapy to initiate antibiotic treatment may result in negative outcomes,” write Grace E. Marx, MD, MPH, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins, Colorado, and colleagues.

The authors note that their objective in reporting the cases was

“to remind clinicians of the importance of early recognition and treatment of Lyme carditis.”

The report was published online today in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The first patient was a 57-year-old man from Vermont who had a 1-week history of fever, fatigue, chest pain, and shortness of breath. Erythematous macules were noted on the trunk, and ECG revealed first-degree atrioventricular block. Despite consultation with an infectious disease physician and positive results for B burgdorferi, antibiotic therapy was not initiated, and the patient died 12 days after initial presentation.

The second patient was a 49-year-old woman from Massachusetts who presented with nausea, vomiting, and severe headache. A CT scan and an ECG were normal. The patient was discharged with antiemetics and analgesics. Two weeks later, she reported syncopal episodes, fatigue, as well as bladder and bowel incontinence. An ECG demonstrated atrioventricular dissociation. Continuous cardiac event monitoring and Lyme testing were ordered. Two days later, results of Lyme testing came in positive, and antibiotics were dispensed. The patient died the following day, before the first antibiotic dose was taken.

Postmortem histopathologic evaluation of heart tissue in both patients revealed

“lymphohistiocytic pancarditis with immunohistochemical and molecular evidence of B burgdorferi.”

The authors acknowledge that Lyme carditis is rare and that only nine other fatal cases have been reported in the literature. However, given the risk for rapid progression in these patients, current guidelines recommend

“temporary pacing by an external pacemaker for patients with symptomatic or high-risk electrocardiographic features.”

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**Comment**

I pray to God that this information is getting to doctors.

Please know Lyme carditis is NOT RARE!  It’s just rarely reported. Also, the fact there are already nine known fatal cases in the literature should cause every doctor to pause and consider. ER doctors also need to know this as many people start off in the ER with heart symptoms but are sent home when they can’t seem to find anything initially.  Unfortunately it isn’t until the heart issues become much more severe or end in death that they are taken seriously.

How many more have to die before doctors wake up?

I personally know patients with serious heart issues that were pooh poohed by doctors. I hope they are still alive.

In this article, CDC expert Dr. Forrester comments that 4-10% of Lyme patients get carditis.  If we take the CDC’s estimate that 300,000 people contract Lyme each year, that’s 12,000 –  30,000 with Lyme carditis. https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/02/21/diagnosis-treatment-of-lyme-carditis/

Does that sound rare to you?

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/07/09/with-unexpected-death-autopsies-should-look-for-lyme-carditis/

Excerpt:  “Lyme expert Dr. Daniel Cameron has done a nice job of summarizing five cases in a blog. http://danielcameronmd.com/autopsy-study-reviews-cases-due-to-sudden-cardiac-death-from-lyme-disease/
Cardiac Tropism of Borrelia burgdorferi: An Autopsy Study of Sudden Cardiac Death Associated with Lyme Carditis. (March 2016)
http://ajp.amjpathol.org/article/S0002-9440(16)00099-7/abstract
Excerpt:

“Fatal Lyme carditis caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi rarely is identified. Here, we describe the pathologic, immunohistochemical, and molecular findings of five case patients.”

Please get the word out.  Enough people have died.

Category:

Heart Issues, Lyme, research, Treatment