Archive for the ‘Testing’ Category

Study: Tickborne Illness, Folate, Autism, PANS/PANDAS & FRAA

https://tickbootcamp.com/episode-595-can-lyme-affect-folate-in-the-brain-dr-lindsey-wells-on-autism-pans-pandas-fraa/

Episode 595: Can Lyme Affect Folate in the Brain? Dr. Lindsey Wells on Autism, PANS/PANDAS & FRAA

Lindsey_Wells_sq1

What if some of the depression, anxiety, brain fog, cognitive dysfunction, OCD, speech changes, and other neuropsychiatric symptoms experienced by people with Lyme and other vector-borne diseases involve more than the infection itself?

In this episode of the Tick Boot Camp Podcast, Matt Sabatello sits down with Dr. Lindsey Wells, ND, a Connecticut naturopathic physician whose work focuses heavily on children with Lyme Disease, PANS/PANDAS, autism spectrum disorder, neurodevelopmental conditions, and other vector-borne diseases.

The centerpiece of the conversation is Dr. Wells’ newly published research, “Folate Receptor Alpha Autoantibodies in Vector-Borne Disease Populations.”

Her study explored an intriguing question: could some people with Lyme disease, Bartonella, Babesia, or other vector-borne infections also have an immune-mediated problem that prevents enough folate from reaching the brain?

The findings open an important new area of investigation. (See link for article and interview)

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**Comment**

The study found that nearly 62% of patients with tick borne illness tested positive for folate receptor alpha autoantibodies.

The study also found that Bartonella was the most common individual infection identified among FRAA-positive patients.

Important excerpt:

She discusses research suggesting that proteins associated with animal dairy may share similarities with folate receptor structures. Through a molecular mimicry mechanism, antibodies generated against those proteins could potentially cross-react with folate receptors.

Dr. Wells therefore commonly incorporates dairy removal when addressing FRAA-positive patients.

She also discusses clinical observations suggesting that FRAA levels can fluctuate and may rise during periods of infection or physiological stress.

Another important point is a routine folate blood test can not determine FRAA status. The FRAT Folate Receptor Autoantibody Test, a specialty blood test designed to detect autoantibodies to folate receptor alpha is required.

Dr. Wells has seen clinical improvements in these patients in anxiety, OCD, cognition, communication, and other neuropsch symptoms by using folinic acid (Leucovorin) as it utilizes another folate transport mechanism to deliver folate to the CNS.

Category:

Autism, Lyme, PANS, research, Supplements, Testing, Treatment

Lyme Vaccine Clinical Trials: History Repeating?

https://connecticutcentinal.com/health/2026/06/01/lyme-vaccine-clinical-trials-history-repeating/

Lyme Vaccine Clinical Trials: History Repeating?

By CT Centinal Staff

June 1, 2026

Public Domain.

By Laura Hovind, CEO, TruthCures

Why is there so much controversy surrounding Lyme disease? Why does it seem you can’t get an accurate Lyme disease test?

Article Excerpts:

Lyme disease researcher and renowned expert Dr. Gary Wormser disclosed in a recent publication that he received a research grant “from Pfizer, Inc. for developing Lyme diagnostics for a Lyme vaccine trial.” Evidently the two-tier method that was developed on behalf of a pivotal efficacy trial still isn’t good enough for the latest pivotal efficacy trial.

In the absence of public disclosures or a transparent process, it looks as if Pfizer paid someone to create or validate a test that will make their vaccine appear effective. In light of Pfizer’s recent withdrawal of numerous trial sites affecting nearly half of their U.S. enrollees, this opaque move does not inspire much-needed trust in a next-generation Lyme vaccine. It only raises more questions about the apparent need to customize a diagnostic test for clinical trials, and the expert contracted to carry out the necessary laboratory work.

Why must a new diagnostic standard be developed every time a vaccine enters phase III trials? Why aren’t diagnostics developed, first, to be most accurate for diagnosing real-world patients, then applied to clinical trials? What behind-the-scenes LYMErix history has Pfizer been made privy to, that led them to conclude they needed a new test? And if, in fact, they have developed their own test, why is such a test allowed to be developed in a vacuum, without any oversight, transparency, or adherence to administrative processes and regulations?

The gap between reported Lyme disease cases and estimated actual cases represents more than 90% of the total. Ninety percent or more of the total cases are unable to test positive and receive proper care. So, it seems obvious that the controversy lies not in the over-diagnosis of Lyme, but in the staggering rate of under-diagnosis.

There is no ethical reality in which Pfizer and Valneva can be permitted to continue their trials. The existing, manipulated diagnostic standard misses 90% of cases. An individual and institution paid by Pfizer to develop “Lyme diagnostics for a Lyme vaccine trial” have helped perpetuate the manipulated standard over three decades. Trial subjects are unwittingly facing harm on multiple fronts—from the vaccine formulation itself, to a potential false sense of security, to a complete inability to be accurately diagnosed if symptoms develop.

We’ve been here before. We’ve seen the damage inflicted by the fiasco surrounding LYMErix. We have witnessed widespread medical abuse over the engineered inaccuracy of the tests developed for previous Lyme vaccine trials but foisted on the public. Yet, history is already in the process of repeating—unlikely to be stopped, with only the prior victims speaking up: “We told you.” (See link for entire chronology)

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**Comment**

Hovind does a superb job detailing the long and sordid history.

What’s hard for folks to grasp is that everything is truly build on false premises – testing, diagnosis, and therefore treatment is fundamentally and fraudulently wrong. If you are new to Lymeland I suggest reading: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/09/25/why-should-we-care-about-lyme-disease-a-colorful-tale-of-government-conflicts-of-interest-probable-bioweaponization-and-pathogen-complexity/ and then https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2026/03/17/why-we-should-care-if-lyme-disease-was-bioengineered/.

For more:

More on the Lyme vaccine:

One of the best articles on the Lyme vaccine was written in 2001 but remains pertinent today: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/02/10/the-bitter-feud-over-lymerix/

Category:

Activism, Lyme, research, Testing, vaccines

The Smear That Buried BITTEN

https://krisnewby.substack.com/p/the-smear-that-buried-bitten?

The Smear that Buried BITTEN

Reframe the claim. Call it a conspiracy. Never release the files.

Kris Newby

Sept. 29, 2026

I spent five years researching Bitten, my book about the U.S. military’s Cold War bug-borne weapons program and the unresolved questions surrounding the first investigation into Lyme disease.

At the center of the story is Willy Burgdorfer, the NIH scientist celebrated for identifying the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Before the book came out, few people knew that Burgdorfer also spent part of his career working with Fort Detrick’s entomological warfare division. Researchers there studied how fleas, mosquitoes, and ticks could be infected with pathogens and used as weapons.

Late in life, Burgdorfer told me he had found a second unusual microbe during the Lyme investigation—one he believed deserved far more scrutiny. He suggested it may have been connected to earlier weapons research and said he had been ordered to set it aside. Letters and laboratory notes I later found supported that account.

To be clear, Bitten did not prove that Lyme disease was a bioweapon. It asked a narrower and more urgent question: whether another potentially disease-causing microbe found in Lyme-area ticks and humans had been ignored, hidden, or never fully investigated.

That distinction matters. When Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) called for a congressional inquiry in 2019 into whether the military had used ticks in biological-weapons research, the public deserved a careful examination of the records. Instead, the debate was quickly reframed around a claim I never made.

Tick researcher Sam Telford III published a Washington Post op-ed titled, “No, Lyme disease is not an escaped military bioweapon, despite what conspiracy theorists say.” A link in the article pointed readers to a review of my book.

I saw this as a classic disinformation move—reframe the argument to include something false, then attribute it to the reporter and brand the person as a conspiracy theorist. Casual readers never get past the headline and a false narrative is burned into memory.

The stakes are not academic. The release of engineered or unnatural biological agents can have long-term effects on people and the environment. Continued secrecy around the tick-borne weapons program still obstructs a timely response to a growing public-health crisis.

A conversation with the author

I called Telford after reading the piece to discuss statements I considered false or misleading. When I asked whether he had read Bitten, he said, “No. I don’t have time to read books.” I offered to send him a copy. “You can, but I’ll probably shred it,” he replied. That exchange stayed with me: an op-ed designed to dismiss my book was written by someone who told me he had not read it.

(See link for article)

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**Comment**

Sadly, we go onto learn that publications would not fact-check the errors in Telford’s op-ed.

Newby kept digging and points out that Telford, a tick researcher at Tufts University didn’t disclose that he was the director of Tuft’s New England Regional Biosafety Laboratory, located in a semi-rural New England town about 40 miles west of Boston. This biolevel-3 lab works on biodefense, dangerous pathogens, and high-containment laboratory operations, including anthrax and tick-borne diseases.

COVID exposed a much bigger reason for the lack of disclosure.

The ‘powers that be’ do not want the eye of Mordor swinging onto tick weaponization because it would draw attention to dangerous work at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, including the importing of foreign pathogens exposed a couple of months ago in the Munster affair, described here and here, not to mention the fact everyone’s dog knows now that COVID was created in a lab and either escaped or was intentionally released.

The questions raised decades ago continue to remain unresolved thanks to Telford and others’ deflection.

For more:

Category:

Activism, Lyme, research, Testing, Ticks, Tularemia

Lyme, Dementia, and the Tests Nobody Thinks to Run

Lyme, Dementia, and the Tests Nobody Thinks to Run

Sept. 2026

Dr. Hartman and Dr. Horowitz walk through the 16 factor MSIDS model, why chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia sit at the top of the list of diagnoses worth reconsidering, and the brain markers Dr. Horowitz now asks physicians to run before and after treatment. They also cover how Lyme testing differs across labs, the dapsone protocol he developed over a decade, and why he believes the same handful of factors keeps surfacing in dementia, autism, ADHD and long COVID. That argument sits at the center of Ending Chronic Illness, his new book from Simon & Schuster, and this conversation is for patients who have seen many doctors without getting answers as well as clinicians willing to widen what they measure before deciding what a patient has. —

Dr. Horowitz developed an empirically validated questionnaire for Lyme-MSIDS which is more accurate than current testing. He also wrote: “Why We Can’t Get Better,” an excellent resource for both patients and practitioners. He states that it’s easier to obtain medically assisted death than treatment for chronic Lyme disease, and wrote a thoroughly sourced article showing that the debate about chronic Lyme is entirely political and not based on science.

CHAPTERS

00:00 — Why Lyme may sit under the dementia numbers

02:24 — The scale of the epidemic and why case counts diverge

06:57 — Reading a Lyme test differently

11:53 — Sixteen nails in the foot

12:44 — The first live human case linking Lyme and Alzheimer’s

16:03 — Why the same 16 factors keep appearing

21:26 — How the dapsone protocol was discovered

24:03 — Brain markers, and amyloid as a defense

27:04 — Autism, ADHD, and measuring inflammation first

36:30 — Which diagnoses should prompt a tick-borne workup

41:14 — Dapsone: side effects, risk, and benefit

50:27 — Which tests to order, and Ending Chronic Illness

Category:

Lyme, Psychological Aspects, Testing, Treatment

After These Young People Died, Postmortems Found an Unnerving Parasite Link

After These Young People Died, Postmortems Found an Unnerving Parasite Link

04 September 2026

ByEsra Öz

After These Young People Died, Postmortems Found an Unnerving Parasite Link (Breitschwerdt et al., Parasites & Vectors, 2026, CC BY 4.0.)

He had been athletic and healthy. Then came years of exhaustion, pain, memory problems, and psychiatric symptoms. Eventually, he had to leave college.

By the time the 27-year-old died, six years of illness and specialist care had failed to restore his health.

Tests performed after his death revealed DNA from two species of Babesia, tiny parasites that infect red blood cells, and Bartonella henselae, the bacterium that causes cat-scratch disease.

His was one of six cases in a postmortem investigation driven by families still seeking answers about their children’s illnesses.

Researchers confirmed DNA from one or both groups of microbes in five individuals.

The discovery left a crucial question unanswered: what role, if any, had these infections played in their illnesses?

The individuals were aged 14 to 30, and all had experienced chronic illness and suicidal thoughts or behaviors.

Four died by suicide, one through medical assistance in dying, and another from a severe disorder involving excessive immune activation.

Their parents contacted Edward Breitschwerdt, an infectious disease researcher at North Carolina State University, after learning about his team’s work on Bartonella and neurological illness. (See link for article)

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**Comment**

This is the perfect article to follow up on the research on ‘PTLDS’ as it wonderfully shows how these pathogens are hard to find let alone effectively treat but are causing needless suicides and unbelievable suffering, due to an old faulty dogma that refuses to go away.

Important excerpt:

“They supplied medical histories and arranged for postmortem samples to reach his laboratory. Some had already been tested or treated for these infections while alive. The investigation was therefore not the first indication of infection in every case. At the laboratory, the initial search returned no clear answers. The researchers analyzed 125 DNA extracts from blood, laboratory blood cultures, tissues, and other body fluids. Initial quantitative PCR screening, which searches for selected genetic sequences, was negative throughout. Digital PCR, which divides samples into many tiny reactions, then produced faint signals in some samples. None reached the study’s threshold for a positive result. Additional targeted tests and DNA sequencing, which reads genetic material to identify organisms, provided confirmation.”

These poor folks would have been ignored by most researchers after the PCR screening, but Bart guru, Dr. Ed Breitschwerdt, is no dummy and kept digging. Notice they did additional ‘targeted’ tests AND DNA sequencing. Mainstream research simply quits looking after using tests that are wrong nearly 90% of the time.

In response to the question of whether the DNA points to an active infection at the time of death, Breitschwerdt said that detecting a known pathogen’s DNA in clinical specimens is medically accepted as evidence of “active infection.

Yet – for some reason, this ‘medically accepted’ evidence does NOT hold true for Lyme/MSIDS. It’s the perfect quagmire with no end in sight.

While this was an ‘observational study’, not a prospective case-controlled study, Breitschwerdt states:

“I think the best interpretation is that infections with vector-borne pathogens that have evolved to induce persistent infections in animals and human patients are not a current diagnostic consideration in patients with chronic illnesses or neuropsychiatric symptoms.”

For more:

Category:

Babesia, Bartonella, Inflammation, Lyme, Psychological Aspects, research, Testing