Archive for the ‘Testing’ Category

Lyme/MSIDS and Psychiatric Illness

  Uploaded on Dec 24, 2016
Lecture to American Psychiatric Association NY Branch, Lenox Hill Hospital

This excellent video has Dr. Jane Marke discussing psychiatric illness in TBI patients, and while the technical lecture is given to psychiatrists it will be highly illuminating to patients.  If you only want to know about psychiatric symptoms associated with Lyme, skip to around minute 28.

Marke states,

“Many doctors are convinced that after a short course of antibiotics patients should be well. The huge number of people still ill years after a course of antibiotics belie this assertion.”

http://www.janemarkemd.com/services-provided/lyme-psychiatry/  Her website states:

“Patients with Lyme, and related tick-borne disease, can have symptoms which mimic every known psychiatric syndrome.  Treatment aimed directly at symptoms can relieve suffering rather quickly.  These symptoms include insomnia, anxiety, “brain fog”, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, depersonalization, depression, and rages.  But antibiotics are needed to undermine the root cause of the illness: the bacteria that causes Lyme: Borrelia burgdorferi.”

Other noteworthy comments:

15:12 – Marke describes the flagella of borrelia is more like the winged arms on a wine bottle opener which powerfully propels the organism.

15:40 – She questions if psychiatric disorders are inflammatory diseases.  She lists: Autism, Alzheimer’s, Schizophrenia, Bipolar, PTSD, Depression, Stress, Sleep Deprivation, Self-harm, and Suicid Attempts.  She also describes a study in England observing children for over a decade in which children with a high IL-8 at age 8 have an 81% change of developing depression by age 18 and a 2-fold chance of becoming psychotic.

18:04 – She states that TBI’s (Tick Borne Illness) causes an impaired Hypopituitary Axis (HPA) which on a chronic basis decreases cortisol and increases inflammation.  

20:40 – Neurotoxins in the brain contribute to mental illness by causing problems with Homosysteine metabolism, which supresses remethylation, but that apoptosis (cell death) which can be reversed by supplementing with SamE.

21:30 – She says Post Treatment Lyme Syndrome (PTLS) is like a “dog whistle,” and usually demonstrates a bias on behalf of the authors who believe that 3 weeks of antibiotics cures LD.  She then goes on to tell of a study that revealed that nearly 50% of those labeled as PTLS (with persistent symptoms) had anti-brain antibodies compared to 16.5% of Post Treatment Healthy Controls (no symptoms).

23:15 – She points out that the Lyme vaccine was taken off the market due to people getting sick from it not from “poor sales” as the cabal keeps saying.  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/28/business/sole-lyme-vaccine-is-pulled-off-market.html

25:34 – Babesia and Bartonella are of extreme interest to psychiatrists.

*Bartonella produces most of the psychiatric problems as well as photophobia, floaters, blurred vision, bone pain, pain in the soles of the feet, headaches, the hallmark rash that looks like stretch marks, migratory polyneuropathy (burning, weakness, and numbness, on both sides of the body that moves around) and POTS (a fast heart-rate when one goes from a lying position to a standing position).  Patients tend to exhibit OCD, self-mutilating behaviors, seizures, rage attacks, and psychosis (bipolar under this).  

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2011/09/25/the-bartonella-checklist-copyrighted-2011-james-schaller-md-version-11/  Dr. Schaller’s Bartonella Checklist

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/01/03/bartonella-treatment/

*Babesia patients present with day/night sweats, severe fatigue, and low blood pressure and exhibit anxiety, panic disorders, and depression.

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2011/09/25/the-babesia-checklist-copyrighted-2011-james-schaller-md-mar-version-20/  Dr. Schaller’s Babesia Checklist

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/01/16/babesia-treatment/

26:35 Persisting atypical and cystic forms drive local inflammation

28:23 Shows an excellent slide of the percentage of patients with late Lyme and various impairments such as Encephalopathy, memory issues, cognitive impairment, motor issues, and more.

31:15 She sites a study in which researchers set out to prove that there is no such thing as Late Lyme causing psychiatric problems.  Compared to controls, chronic lyme patients met criteria for adult onset ADHD (both inattentive type and hyperactive/impulsive types combined) more frequently.  She encourages doctors to take “syndromes,” and try to find an etiology, rather than the reverse, which is what is typically done.  In this specific case, she’s asking doctors to question and try to find solid reasons (etiology) why an adult would all of a sudden have ADHD.

33:30 She says TBI patients are the worst sleepers she’s encountered.  This is important because it is when toxins are cleared in the brain.

35:30 Depression is common in TBI patients.

36:50 She has an informative slide on suicides from those with Lyme collected from newspapers.

38:55 Shows a slide on Case studies of Intrusive Symptoms such as musical hallucinations, intrusive thoughts, Cognitive Tics, catastrophising, OCD.

40:00 Pediatric Auto-Immune Neurological Disorder (PANDAS) – caused by a lot of different organisms, including TBI’s, and it can also occur in adults.  These folks do extremely well on antibiotics or Immunoglobulin.  http://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/19/misdiagnosed-bipolar-one-girls-struggle-through-psych-wards-before-stanford-doctors-make-bold-diagnosis-and-treatment/

http://www.pandasnetwork.org/understanding-pandaspans/ivig/

41:00 Depersonalization, Violence, self-harm, and schizophrenia can be a part of the picture with TBI’s. At 41:20 she tells the story of a little girl who would throw horrific temper tantrums in which she would destroy her room and then feel absolutely horrible after the fact.  She also had a psychotic episode.  Her MSIDS testing came back flagrantly positive.

42:21 Autism – There is vertical transmission of Lyme from mother to fetus.  Those with Bb in a study made remarkable improvement taking antibiotics.

42:56 Finding Spirochetes in Alzheimer’s patients as well as other pathogens.

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/04/10/bugs-causing-alzheimers/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/08/09/dr-paul-duray-research-fellowship-foundation-some-great-research-being-done-on-lyme-disease/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/06/03/borrelia-hiding-in-worms-causing-chronic-brain-diseases/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-michael-conner/man-diagnosed-with-als-di_b_8891262.html

45:18 She points out the CDC guidelines and controversies, including the very poor testing and the vilification of small labs.  She recommends CLIA certified labs and that there is NO SUCH THING AS AN FDA APPROVED LAB.  She recommends IGeneX labs as they report the bands to you and uses more than 1 strain of Bb.

For more on IGeneX:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/12/07/igenex-presentation/

48:17 She shows a SPECT scan with marked improvement after treatment with antibiotics for Encephalopathy.  She also states that minocycline probably crosses the blood brain barrier the best.

49:02 is a slide with supplements that directly help detoxification, inflammation, and more.  (vitamins, glutathione, LDN, herbs, diet, and compounds such as NAC, etc).  For info on LDN:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/12/18/ldn/ and on NAC: http://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2010/5/n-acetyl-cysteine/page-01

50:40 Marke asks psychiatrists with treatment resistant patients to consider microbes.

For more information on psychiatric Lyme: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2015/10/18/psychiatric-lymemsids/

For a great article for on-line counseling:  https://www.ruschellekhanna.com/onlinetherapy

Category:

Lyme, Lyme Vaccine, Psychological Aspects, research, Testing, Treatment

Lyme Science Owned By Good Ol’ Boys

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/flunk-the-lyme-test-just-wait-and-get-sicker_us_5873ef2fe4b08052400ee537?timestamp=1483994986602

According to Mary Beth Pfeiffer, an investigative journalist writing the book, “The First Epidemic,” which is about ticks and the diseases they carry, scientific debate on tick borne illness is tightly controlled by a cabal – most of which work at the CDC.

For patients, patient advocates, and medical practitioners trained by ILADS (The International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society) this is nothing new.

However, now Sin Lee, a pathologist and scientist who directs Milford Molecular Diagnostics, is speaking out about it as he has received numerous publication rejections when he attempted to rebut the oft repeated dogma that has ruled the medical world for decades regarding tick borne illness.

Lee believes the current standard advises doctors to take a “wait and see” approach and postpone treatment in patients until diagnosis can be confirmed by serologic tests.

True to form, Paul Mead of the CDC, denies, denies, denies this.

The specific article Lee rebuts https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27976670 makes it crystal clear that a positive test is “required” without the rash, which the CDC’s website states happens in 60-80% of cases, but other sources and my own personal experience as an advocate claim is much less. In fact, research shows those getting the EM rash to be highly variable – anywhere from 25%-80%. In this first ever patient sample, only a quarter got the rash: 1976circularletterpdf  https://www.lymedisease.org/lymepolicywonk-how-many-of-those-with-lyme-disease-have-the-rash-estimates-range-from-27-80-2/

The Steere article which advocates a positive test before treating also says that in days to weeks spirochetes can spread everywhere.

Huh?

Even the CDC website states patients have symptoms before it has disseminated.

In other words, you win the lotto if you get the rash. If you don’t, well……

Running it to ground, Lee wrote that Steere, Mead, and colleagues “glossed over” the currently accepted testing that, “by design misses early cases” and requires patients to be tested twice, wasting valuable time. Lee says DNA sequencing that has published science behind it, should be used instead. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20231610 and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21040573. Lee went to international journals and was published after the U.S. Cabal’s rejection.

Lee isn’t alone.

Marcia Herman, Giddens, adjunct professor at Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina states,

“There has never been a well-designed study to examine this issue,” in regard to 80% getting the EM rash.

Christian Perronne, physician on the infectious diseases faculty at the University of Versailles-St Quentin, France, states,

“If you try to publish a little bit different from the guidelines, it’s anti-science.”

And, Lyme literate physician Raphael Stricker goes on record,

“The primer propagates one of the biggest myths about Lyme disease diagnosis instead of acknowledging the dreadful state of 30-year-old Lyme serology and the need for better testing.”

It doesn’t get any clearer than that.
But wait – yes it does.

Benjamin Luft, one of the physicians who wrote the original Lyme guidelines in 2000 admitted that he now agrees that Lyme disease can persist making it infinitely more difficult to treat as time progresses and that The Cabal’s continual emphasis on “false positives” is a red herring – and that early treatment has great benefit.

And lastly, Pffeifer spoke with Raymond Dattwyler, a 1994 CDC panelist that helped write the LD guidelines, who stated,

“Twenty years ago I would’ve said they’re fine. Now I say, ‘oh shit, we were wrong.’ It doesn’t look as good as we thought it was.”

Well, that’s comforting.

Please go here to read about other members of this Cabal who will attack anyone who defies the accepted narrative.  They all have severe conflicts of interest.

Category:

Lyme, research, Testing

Syphilis Re-emerging

These findings are important for MSIDS (multi systemic infectious disease disease syndrome  or Lyme with friends) patients because people with false positive testing results for Syphilis may have Lyme Disease.  https://www.sharecare.com/health/stds-sexually-transmitted-diseases/why-false-positive-test-syphilis

When writer of The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan, asked her doctor to test her for Lyme he insisted she didn’t have LD because it was too rare and proceeded to test her for Syphilis. https://www.amytan.net/lyme-disease.html

http://www.nature.com/articles/nmicrobiol2016245

Origin of modern syphilis and emergence of a pandemic Treponema pallidum cluster
Natasha Arora, Verena J. Schuenemann[…]Homayoun C. Bagheri
Nature Microbiology 2, Article number: 16245 (2016)
doi:10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.245
Published online:
05 December 2016

Abstract
The abrupt onslaught of the syphilis pandemic that started in the late fifteenth century established this devastating infectious disease as one of the most feared in human history1. Surprisingly, despite the availability of effective antibiotic treatment since the mid-twentieth century, this bacterial infection, which is caused by Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum (TPA), has been re-emerging globally in the last few decades with an estimated 10.6 million cases in 2008 (ref. 2). Although resistance to penicillin has not yet been identified, an increasing number of strains fail to respond to the second-line antibiotic azithromycin3. Little is known about the genetic patterns in current infections or the evolutionary origins of the disease due to the low quantities of treponemal DNA in clinical samples and difficulties in cultivating the pathogen4. Here, we used DNA capture and whole-genome sequencing to successfully interrogate genome-wide variation from syphilis patient specimens, combined with laboratory samples of TPA and two other subspecies. Phylogenetic comparisons based on the sequenced genomes indicate that the TPA strains examined share a common ancestor after the fifteenth century, within the early modern era. Moreover, most contemporary strains are azithromycin-resistant and are members of a globally dominant cluster, named here as SS14-Ω. The cluster diversified from a common ancestor in the mid-twentieth century subsequent to the discovery of antibiotics. Its recent phylogenetic divergence and global presence point to the emergence of a pandemic strain cluster.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/06/how-syphilis-came-roaring-back/488375/

“Perhaps most concerning, the past two years have seen a cluster of cases of syphilis of the eye, and a rise in cases of congenital syphilis—something even developing countries have been able to eliminate.

The disease is curable with antibiotics, but it’s a bit of a secret agent, transmissible through almost every sexual means and erupting as a tiny lesion about a month after exposure. At various stages of the infection, it might cause no symptoms or a puzzling array of them. If gone undiagnosed, it can cause everything from disfigurement to seizures.”

https://www.poz.com/article/secret-life-syphilis  By Daniel Wolfe

“TB, rare cancers and pneumonias — all of these were documented, if unusual, expressions of syphilis before the antibiotic era,” says Joan McKenna, a research physiologist whose 1986 article in the journal Medical Hypotheses first presented the AIDS-syphilis connection.
McKenna found an unlikely ally in Sandra Larsen, MD, then a syphilis expert at the CDC. “The clinical manifestations of syphilis, which have taken various forms over the century, have now been transformed to mimic the appearance of the opportunistic infections and cancers that may accompany HIV infection, as well as the clinical symptoms of AIDS itself,” Larsen wrote. McKenna began sending AIDS patients in for confirmatory syphilis tests, even when they’d first tested negative. “We had people showing up negative on the initial tests even when they had known infections and tertiary symptoms,” she says. “These syphilis cases were being missed.”
Others interested in the AIDS-syphilis link scrapped the theory in the late ’80s, when doctors treating HIVers with IV antibiotics found that they still sickened and died. But the idea that a new form of chronic syphilis may be mistaken for HIV-related infections, has been kept alive by Toronto researcher John Scythes and colleague Colman Jones. “Repeated studies show that syphilis infection and, particularly, reinfection, may not be detected with current tests,” Jones says. “So some of those we say are cured of syphilis may instead be being missed. The CDC estimated there were 325,000 cases of untreated syphilis at the end of the 1970s. Where did they go?”
New research into syphilis’ suburban cousin — Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochete that causes Lyme disease — has bolstered the case for better tests. Recently researchers have successfully cultured B. burgdorferi from the blood of Lyme disease patients supposedly cured by antibiotics and found a cyst-like form of the Lyme spirochete, adopted in response to meds, which is often missed with standard microscopy. Might syphilis similarly adapt to avoid antibiotics and detection? “There is much we do not yet know,” says Willy Burgdorfer, PhD, the Lyme spirochete’s discoverer. “But T. pallidum does behave in ways very similar to B. burgdorferi.”

http://www.environmentalevolution.org/environmentalevolution.org/Fair_Use_files/312-Roundbodies.pdf (2009)

“Far from eradicating syphilis, antibiotics are driving the disease underground and increasing the difficulty of detection. Although the incidence of disease has more than tripled since 1955, the chancre and secondary rash no longer are commonly seen. Undoubtedly, some of these lesions are being suppressed and the disease masked by the indiscriminate use of antibiotics. The ominous prospect of a widespread resurgence of the disease in its tertiary forms looms ahead” (Pereyra and Voller, 1970)…..We urge that the possible direct causal involvement of spirochetes and their round bodies to symptoms of immune deficiency be carefully and vigorously investigated.”

http://www.academia.edu/5302525/Syphilis_in_the_AIDS_Era_Diagnostic_Dilemma_and_Therapeutic_Challenge_co-authored_with_John_Scythes_

This review argues that syphilis has been underdiagnosed and under treated… we suggest that latent syphilis is a chronic active immunological condition that drives the AIDS process and that non-treponemal tests have failed to associate syphilis with immune suppression since this screening concept was developed in 1906. In light of the overwhelming association between a past history of syphilis and HIV seroconversion, more sensitive tools, including recombinant antigen-based immunological tests and direct detection (PCR) technology, are needed to adequately assess the role of latent syphilis in persons with HIV/AIDS. Repeating older syphilis reinoculation studies may help establish a successful animal model for AIDS, and resolve many paradoxes in HIV science.

https://www.cdc.gov/std/syphilis/stdfact-syphilis-detailed.htm  (Syphilis fact sheet with symptoms)

https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats15/tables/1.htm  In the US in 2015, there were nearly 75,000 cases of Syphilis.

https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/01/syphilis-las-vegas/  Syphilis has more than doubled in Las Vegas since 2012.

http://wreg.com/2016/09/21/cases-of-syphilis-on-the-rise-in-mississippi/  Health Department in Mississippi says Syphilis cases are up 60% this year.

Cases of syphilis on the rise in Mississippi

 

Category:

Lyme, research, Syphilis, Testing

IGeneX Presentation

Published on Dec 7, 2016

The Madison Area Lyme Support Group hosts the IGeneX Lab to present information regarding testing of tick-borne illnesses.   2 Hours long

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/11/01/nov-support-meeting-with-igenex-lab/

Transmission Time:  Only one study done on Mice.  At 24 hours every tick had transmitted to the mice; however, in the following video microbiologist Holly Ahern explains how this information has been inappropriately used for the widely held belief that if you pull a tick off before 24 hours you won’t get infected.  No human studies have been done and animal studies have proven that transmission can occur in under 16 hours and it occurs frequently in under 24 hours.  https://www.dovepress.com/lyme-borreliosis-a-review-of-data-on-transmission-time-after-tick-atta-peer-reviewed-article-IJGM

Bob Giguere of IGeneX states a case by Dr. Jones of a little girl who went outside to play about 8:30a.m. and came inside at 10:30 with an attached tick above her right eye.  By 2 o’clock, she had developed the facial palsy.  At the hospital she was told it couldn’t be Lyme as the tick hadn’t been attached long enough.  They offered a neuro-consult…..

By 4pm she couldn’t walk or talk.

Dr. Jones met the family in his office on a Saturday, gave her an intramuscular injection of antibiotics and within 2 hours the palsy was gone.  He continued her treatment for approximately 4 weeks.

Coincidence?

I think not.  

Do not believe what the “experts” tell you about transmission times!

Category:

Lyme, research, Support Group Presentations, Testing, Ticks

Klinghardt’s New Lyme Test

http://www.chronicwellnesssummits.com/klinghardt-develops-more-accurate-lyme-disease-test/  (Video located at this link)

Lyme disease and other co-infections have historically been difficult to diagnose. That’s why the breakthrough testing process developed by Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, founder of the Sophia Health Institute, to diagnose lyme is such a significant discovery.

Tests such as the Western Blot look for an immune response in patients via their blood samples. Something that often doesn’t occur if someone has had Lyme for a significant amount of time as the organisms tend to hide in tissues vs. the blood stream.

“They’re in the fascia of the membranes — the sleeves around the muscles,” said Dr. Klinghardt in a Facebook LIVE video on September 9. “The internal environment of the blood vessels and so forth. In order to diagnose them, we would have to take tissue samples from that.”

Instead of taking tissue samples, Dr. Klinghardt has come up with a much simpler solution to draw the organisms out.

“(It) involves one hour of very, very deep body tissue body work where the tissues are squeezed and pushed and pulled to the edge of pain of the patient and then we collect the very first urine afterwards,” he said.

At the time of the video interview, Dr. Klinghardt and the Sophia Health Institute had conducted approximately 120 of these tests.

“We’ve had two patients that were negative,” he said. “That means we have the highest yield of any Lyme test so far with that. Our worst suspicions have come to be reality that pretty much every person that walks in our office has at least one type of Borrelia, at least one type of Bartonella, at least one type of Babesia, and maybe Anaplasma and other things as well.”

The test is providing conclusive answers to diagnose lyme for individuals who have been frustrated with false negatives amidst overwhelming symptoms.

Learn more about Chronic Wellness by attending our LIVE webcast

Even further than that, Dr. Klinghardt and his team can provide treatment to these patients and then monitor progress by conducting the same test down the line.

“If we can still tease out microbes out of the tissues … (into) the blood stream … and then measuring in the urine … we’re not done,” he said. “We find, on average, treatment time is about nine months to a year and a half. We are only using herbal compounds that are prepared in a certain way and we see very, very good success rates with that and we’re teaching that in other places.”

This is truly exciting news for everyone in the Lyme community, especially those who have been needlessly suffering for YEARS without a proper diagnosis or a blood test to backup their symptoms.

Learn more about Dr. Klinghardt and the Sophia Health Institute at www.SophiaHI.com or you can follow them on Facebook.

Category:

Testing