Archive for the ‘research’ Category

Study on Ceftriaxone

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01744/abstract

Abstract

Although the majority of Lyme disease patients can be cured, at least 10-20% of the patients continue to suffer from persisting symptoms such as fatigue, muscular and joint pain, and neurologic impairment after standard 2-4 week antibiotic treatment. While the causes for this post-treatment Lyme disease symptoms are unclear, one possibility is due to B. burgdorferi persisters that are not effectively killed by current antibiotics such as doxycycline or amoxicillin used to treat Lyme disease. A previous study showed that four rounds of ceftriaxone pulse dosing treatment eradicated B. burgdorferi persisters in vitro using a relatively young late log phase culture (5 day old).

In this study, we investigated if ceftriaxone pulse dosing could also eradicate B. burgdorferi persisters in older stationary phase cultures (10 day old) enriched with more resistant microcolony form of persisters. We found that ceftriaxone pulse dosing could only eradicate planktonic log phase B. burgdorferi spirochetal forms and round body forms but not more resistant aggregated biofilm-like microcolony persisters enriched in stationary phase cultures. Moreover, we found that not all drugs are suitable for pulse dosing, with bactericidal drugs ceftriaxone and cefuroxime being more appropriate for pulse dosing than bacteriostatic drug doxycycline and persister drug daptomycin.

We also showed that drug combination pulse dosing treatment was more effective than single drug pulse dosing. Importantly, we demonstrate that pulse dosing treatment impaired the activity of the persister drug daptomycin and its drug combination against B. burgdorferi persisters and that the most effective way to kill the more resistant biofilm-like microcolonies is the daptomycin/doxycycline/ceftriaxone triple drug combination without pulse dosing. Our findings indicate pulse dosing may not always work as a general principle but rather depends on the specific drugs used, with cidal drugs being more appropriate for pulse dosing than static or persister drugs, and that drug combination approach with persister drugs is more effective at killing the more resistant microcolony form of persisters than pulse dosing.

These observations may have implications for more effective treatment of Lyme disease. Future studies are required to validate these findings in animal models of B. burgdorferi persistence.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01744/abstract

Free, full provisional text (pdf file, 2.31 MB):
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01744/pdf

Category:

Lyme, research, Treatment

The Kite Mosquito Patch

Approximately 2 min.

http://www.kitepatch.com/kite-patch

Dr. Anandasankar Ray and his team from the University of California, Riverside, has developed the Kite Patch, a small patch worn on clothing to protect against mosquitos.  The patch blocks the mosquitoes’ ability to track and detect humans for up to 48 hours.  It should be for sale in 2017.  http://magazine.ucr.edu/44

All Kite products are free from DEET or any other potentially harmful or toxic chemicals.  The company is committed to replacing outdated and potentially unhealthy repellents that have dominated the market for decades.

The patch could help protect against malaria, West Nile, Dengue fever, and other mosquito-borne diseases.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v474/n7349/full/nature10081.html  Journal article.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/high-tech-hope-for-repelling-mosquitoes/?_r=0  One person’s review.

 

Category:

Malaria, mosquitoes, research, Viruses

Willy Speaks From the Grave Rickettsia helvetica

https://www.statnews.com/2016/10/12/swiss-agent-lyme-disease-mystery/

In a riveting article (go to link above) STAT obtained Willy Burgdorfer’s documents found in his garage after his death in 2014.

 Approx. 4 min WBUR interview with Charles Piller, author of the link above.

What makes this crucial for MSIDS patients is his fascination and concern with Rickettsia helvetica, something he coined, “Swiss Agent.” The article poses an idea that doctors might be mistaking this infection for Lyme or that this agent could also be another co-infection complicating and confusing cases.

Rickettsia helvetica is known predominantly in Europe and Asia as relatively rare but linked to sudden deaths from heart disease. Other symptoms include facial palsy, deafness, meningitis, chronic muscle weakness, temporary paralysis, debilitating fatigue, severe headaches, and sarcoidosis.

There is no test in the U.S. for Rickettsia helvetica.

Burgdorfer discovered the pathogen in 1978 in Switzerland. The stacks of papers found in his garage indicate he meant to delve into it further with a prophetic note written in red on top of the stack that stated, “I wondered why somebody didn’t do something, then I realized that I am somebody.”

University of California, Berkeley, medical entomologist and Lyme expert, Robert Lane, states that Rh could cause clinical illness on its own or act with other pathogens worsening cases.

When the discovery of the cause of Lyme was reported in the journal Science in 1982, Burgdorfer identified Rickettsia in Lyme patients’ sera and ticks, but in the final article no mention of it was made.

Currently, the CDC is using molecular techniques on 30,000 sera samples from those with suspected tick-borne illness but will take several more years to finish. It is believed that if Rickettsia helvetica is there, it will be found.

Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, has identified 20 new viruses in ticks, using a process that could result in making tests affordable to patients. He also trying to get funding to include Rickettsia in his research.

We can thank Burgdorfer for contemplating all of this before his death and ultimately contacting Ron Lindorf to retrieve his boxes of research. Willy told him he wanted it available to people on the internet so they could read it for themselves. From there, Lindorf met with Kris Newby, the producer of “Under Our Skin,” the best primer on Lyme Disease out there. http://underourskin.com/#home-underourskin.  If you haven’t seen this film, you need to now. It will explain all the reasons why we find ourselves in a medical quagmire. The sequel, “Emergence,”
http://underourskin.com/sequel/#sequel-home is just as powerful and offers much hope as it follows many patients through treatment to health.

Newby shared the documents with STAT, hoping that an independent report would be made.

 

Category:

Lyme, research, Ticks

Mycobacterium Drugs For LD

Back in May you may remember the article about Dr. Horowitz having success with Dapsone, a drug commonly used for Leprosy, in his MSIDS patients that didn’t respond well to conventional treatment.  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/05/09/leprosy-drug-for-lyme/.  It was reported that patients improved in all symptoms except for headache.

Recently he and Phyllis R. Freeman published on another mycobacterium drug, pyrazinamide, (PZA).  https://www.jscimedcentral.com/Arthritis/arthritis-1-1008.pdf

He states in the study that co-infection is the rule and that one recent study showed 45% of ticks were co-infected with up to five different pathogens, with up to eight identified in the same tick.  Patients who have Lyme (borrelia) and are co-infected are much sicker and often resistant to standard therapies and often have varied clinical presentations making them harder to diagnose and treat.

The case study has based on a woman with Borrelia burgdorferi, Borrelia hermsii, possible prior exposure to tularemia, exposure to Mycoplasma pneumonia, multiple viruses, fibromyalgia, and rheumatoid arthritis.

This poor woman had been through hell and back for years.  Under Dr. Horowitz’s care she improved from 30% to 50%, but with the addition of Dapsone had a sudden fourfold increase in tularemia titers as well as Bartonella titers turning positive.

While making continuous progress the patient had ongoing joint pain which interfered with sleep as well as ongoing severe blood-filled blisters, oral/genital ulcerations, and increased granulomas.

While a rheumatologist wanted to put her on an immunosuppressive, she and Dr. Horowitz chose to try 500mg (based on body weight) of PZA twice a day combined with rifampin and minocycline.  Her liver was monitored every two weeks and was helped with alpha lipoid acid 600mg and milk thistle 250mg.

Two months later she reported up to 80% of normal functioning, had improvement in her most resistant dermatological symptoms with the resolution of her oral ulcers, and stated that it was the best protocol she had done in the past 20 years.

Horowitz reports that the Dapsone and PZA protocols have been the most effective treatment additions for resistant Lyme and autoimmune symptoms, with PZA being the most effective for dermatological manifestations of Bahcet’s and arthritic/granulomatous changes.

 

 

 

 

Category:

Lyme, research, Treatment

Chlamydia-Like Organisms Found in Ticks

http://www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/4/3/28/pdf

There are currently nine families in the order Chlamydiales. Most are familiar with the family that includes trachomatis (the most commonly reported STD) and C. pneumonia (spreads by air). The other eight families are Chlamydia-Like Organisma (CLO’s). Many of these CLO’s are found in environmental samples such as water, soil, and various animals including mammals, reptiles, fish and our common enemy, the tick, along with other arthropods.

Scientists do not yet understand how this affects human health; however, associations have been made between CLO’s and tubal factor infertility, adverse pregnancy outcome, lower respiratory tract infections, and pneumonia.

The following abstract shows that ticks can carry CLO’s as well as borrelia (the causative agent of Lyme Disease), Babesia, Bartonella, Anaplasma, B. miyamotoi, tick-borne encephalitis, Mycoplasma, and more.
http://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms4030028

Abstract
Ticks carry several human pathogenic microbes including Borreliae and Flavivirus causing tick-born encephalitis. Ticks can also carry DNA of Chlamydia-like organisms (CLOs). The purpose of this study was to investigate the occurrence of CLOs in ticks and skin biopsies taken from individuals with suspected tick bite.

DNA from CLOs was detected by pan-Chlamydiales-PCR in 40% of adult ticks from southwestern Finland. The estimated minimal infection rate for nymphs and larvae (studied in pools) was 6% and 2%, respectively. For the first time, we show CLO DNA also in human skin as 68% of all skin biopsies studied contained CLO DNA as determined through pan-Chlamydiales-PCR.

Sequence analyses based on the 16S rRNA gene fragment indicated that the sequences detected in ticks were heterogeneous, representing various CLO families; whereas the majority of the sequences from human skin remained “unclassified Chlamydiales” and might represent a new family-level lineage. CLO sequences detected in four skin biopsies were most closely related to “uncultured Chlamydial bacterium clones from Ixodes ricinus ticks” and two of them were very similar to CLO sequences from Finnish ticks.

These results suggest that CLO DNA is present in human skin; ticks carry CLOs and could potentially transmit CLOs to humans.

Two other studies have come to the same conclusion: that there exists a high prevalence and diversity of Chlamydiales DNA in ticks and the very real possibility of human infection.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24698831 and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26386066

All of this continues to demonstrate why Lyme Disease isn’t typically just Lyme Disease but MSIDS, multi systemic infectious disease syndrome, a literal menagerie of pathogens invading the human host making our cases extremely complex and difficult.

Worth mentioning again is the fact spirochetes have been detected in semen and vaginal secretions demonstrating that MSIDS is an STD and can be passed congenitally.

http://afmr.org/Western/
These narratives substantiate a study presented at the annual Western Regional Meeting of the American Federation for Medical Research, with an abstract published in the January issue of the Journal of Investigative Medicine, in which researchers tested semen samples and vaginal secretions from three groups: controls without evidence of Lyme, random subjects who tested positive for Lyme, and married heterosexual couples engaging in unprotected sex who tested positive for Lyme. The results were clear: all of the controls tested negative in semen and vaginal secretions. All women with Lyme tested positive in vaginal secretions, while about half of the men tested positive in semen. One of the heterosexual couples showed identical strains. Internist Raphael Stricker stated, “There is always some risk of getting Lyme Disease from a tickbite in the woods, but there may be a bigger risk of getting Lyme Disease in the bedroom.” Reference: The Journal of Investigative Medicine 2014;62:280-281.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mothers-may-pass-lyme-disease-to-children-in-the-womb/
“Scientists have long suspected, however, that the spiral-shaped Lyme bacteria, Borrelia burgoferi, can be passed gestationally, since other “spirochetes” – most notably the syphilis bacteria – are known to be transmitted in the womb, causing a range of birth defects.”

Category:

Lyme, research, Syphilis, Ticks