Archive for the ‘Ticks’ Category

Tickborne Relapsing Fever in Austin, TX

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30160650

Emerg Infect Dis. 2018 Nov 17;24(11). doi: 10.3201/eid2411.172033. [Epub ahead of print]

Detection of Tickborne Relapsing Fever Spirochete, Austin, Texas, USA.

Bissett JD, Ledet S, Krishnavajhala A, Armstrong BA, Klioueva A, Sexton C, Replogle A, Schriefer ME, Lopez JE.

Abstract

In March 2017, a patient became febrile within 4 days after visiting a rustic conference center in Austin, Texas, USA, where Austin Public Health suspected an outbreak of tickborne relapsing fever a month earlier. Evaluation of a patient blood smear and molecular diagnostic assays identified Borrelia turicatae as the causative agent. We could not gain access to the property to collect ticks. Thus, we focused efforts at a nearby public park, <1 mile from the suspected exposure site. We trapped Ornithodoros turicata ticks from 2 locations in the park, and laboratory evaluation resulted in cultivation of 3 B. turicatae isolates. Multilocus sequencing of 3 chromosomal loci (flaB, rrs, and gyrB) indicated that the isolates were identical to those of B. turicatae 91E135 (a tick isolate) and BTE5EL (a human isolate). We identified the endemicity of O. turicata ticks and likely emergence of B. turicatae in this city.

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**Comment**

For decades there has been complete denial of Lyme in the South.  Dr. Masters fought this tooth and nail:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/10/06/remembering-dr-masters-the-rebel-for-lyme-patients-who-took-on-the-cdc-single-handedly/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/05/31/no-lyme-in-the-south-guess-again/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/10/25/hope-for-southerners/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/08/18/lyme-found-in-all-50-states/

TBRF has been found in Austin, TX caves:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/04/23/tick-borne-relapsing-fever-found-in-austin-texas-caves/

Thankfully more and more is coming out revealing that in fact these poor patients and the doctors who dare to treat them are not delusional but are in fact dealing with tick borne illness.  The Lyme-like illness that for all intents and purposes looks, smells, and acts just like Lyme, is caused by something that needs to be identified.  We need to quit focusing on the red herring of climate change and start identifying these bugs so people can get better.

Bartonella isn’t even on the radar yet it is a HUGE player:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/12/29/cardinal-state-bartonella/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/05/07/fox-news-bartonella-is-the-new-lyme-disease/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/01/03/bartonella-treatment/  Various strains have been found in eye fluid, the heart (myocarditis and endocarditis), and cysts, and can infect by nearly anything puncturing the skin and exchanging bodily fluids – including needles. Evidence also suggests congenital transmission.…. Symptoms are largely associated with where the blood flow is compromised. The reason many have pain in the soles of their feet is due to inflammation caused by microvascular trauma. It has been known to cause cysts around dental roots leading to chronic and hard to diagnose head and face pain as well as root canals. This microvascular trauma is also to blame for brain issues causing psychological issues such as anxiety, anger, and suicidal thoughts, since the small vessel disease affects executive function. A cog is literally caught in the wheel. As neurotransmitters become depleted due to overstimulation, depression rears its ugly head. A vicious cycle ensues.  Due to the cyclical nature of Bartonella and that it exists in very low amounts in human blood, blood tests are unreliable. It also has a long division time between 22-24 hours and requires a special growth environment. There is a Triple Draw through Galaxy which collects blood over 8 days to maximize the test, stating a 90% reduction in false negatives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category:

research, Tickborne Relapsing Fever, Ticks, Transmission

FREE – Webinar on Ticks

https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7750406180072174593  (register here)

New and Expanding Tick Threats to Schools

Tue, Sep 18, 2018 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM CDT, 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. ET, Live Q & A Afterward

Tick-tock the time is now. Tick season is just around the corner. EPA’s Center for Integrated Pest Management will host an informational webinar about ticks, their specific identification and how to monitor and control these pests.
Presenters will discuss tick-borne disease risk, general tick management issues that include considerations around pesticide application and integrating tick communication and action plans into current IPM management plans for schools. Register now!
Our Featured presenters:
* Susan Elias, M.S., Vector-borne Disease Ecologist, Maine Medical Center Research Institute
*Janis Hogan, BUS, RN, NCSN, School Nurse, Camden Hill Regional High School, Maine
*Larry Dapsis, M.S., Deer Tick Project Coordinator and Entomologist, Cape Cod Cooperative Extension
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This webinar will prepare you to-
  •  Understand expansion history along with current and future projections of tick threats in specific geographic regions;
  • Identify ticks, successfully remove them and determine whether to test them;
  • Utilize trained staff, such as school nurses, to educate the school community about ticks and implement school IPM policies; and
  • Consider options for repelling ticks as it relates to personal protection or pesticide application. 

Miss a webinar? No problem! Most previously recorded webinars are available for on-demand viewing on EPA’s website:  <http://links.govdelivery.com:80/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbXNpZD0mYXVpZD0mbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTgwOTExLjk0NzM5ODAxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDE4MDkxMS45NDczOTgwMSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE3MzAyMjM0JmVtYWlsaWQ9bGVtb24uamVubmlmZXJAZXBhLmdvdiZ1c2VyaWQ9bGVtb24uamVubmlmZXJAZXBhLmdvdiZ0YXJnZXRpZD0mZmw9Jm12aWQ9JmV4dHJhPSYmJg==&&&102&&&https://www.epa.gov/managing-pests-schools>.

Questions? If you have any questions about the IPM guidance or upcoming trainings and webinars, please contact us at school.ipm@epa.gov<mailto:school.ipm@epa.gov>.

 

EPA is committed to protecting the privacy and security of the information it holds. By clicking the “Register” button you agree to receive emails from EPA regarding this webinar. In addition, you consent to allow EPA to use your information, in aggregate, to report on webinar attendance and participant demographics. EPA will not share your information with any outside entities.

Category:

Activism, Ticks, Treatment

Three Surprising Things I Learned About Asian Longhorned Ticks – The Tick Guy, Tom Mather

https://tickencounter.org/tick_notes/three_surprising_things

Three SURPRISING Things I Learned About Asian Longhorned Ticks

By Tom Mather

Late in the evening Sunday August 12. Only 4 more TickSpotters pictures left to look at today. But wait, what’s THAT one. This TickSpotter had sent in something different; a simple picture of a suspicious-looking tick found on their dog after a walk earlier that day in a Staten Island (NY) park. Definitely genus Haemaphysalis, but which one of the 3 possible species: one mainly feeds on rabbits, one on birds, and the third is a presumably still rare but recently recognized exotic invader from Asia – the longhorned tick. It couldn’t be that one, could it? Well, maybe. We emailed the submitter about the possibilities and asked them to mail the tick in to the lab for a closer examination. They did. It was!! The Asian longhorned tick. It was my first.

Since then, TickSpotters have sent additional suspicious-looking ticks — from Somerville NJ, Harrison NY, Front Royal VA, Newtown PA…a bit unprecedented. Our TickSpotters crowd-sourced survey only had 3 Haemaphysalis spp. submissions over the past 2 years, presumably the rabbit type, yet here were 5 in just 3 weeks. It was late in the summer of 2018 and something new was happening in the world of ticks…and I thought to myself “this TickGuy needs to know more”. That’s when the idea of a field trip popped into my head—”let’s go find some longhorned ticks.”

After securing the probable tick encounter location on Staten Island, ITM project manager Steve and I headed south. We arrived at our destination early; it was going to be a hot day. Vials and tweezers in hand, we hurriedly unfurled our tick flag and drag, and within 20 feet of getting out of the car, pretty much still in the parking lot, our drag was already covered with microscopic tick larvae. “These must be Lone Stars”, I boldly announced. “We’ll collect some and check under the microscope later;” we needed to keep moving if we hoped to encounter those rare longicornus ticks.

But it was only one more short pull of the drag when Steve announced, “I think I have one”! It was, but it was weird. This one was a partially-engorged female tick. You don’t usually collect partially-engorged ticks on a tick drag. We were just fifty feet from the car, and less than 5 minutes into our longhorned tick collecting field trip; and it all just seemed, well, strange. I now had no idea what to expect next…but, boy was this FUN!

Soon we were joined by post-doc Maria Pilar, a graceful Argentinian scholar working with Maria Diuk-Wasser at Columbia on a project to better understand where, how and why people encounter ticks. She’d been working the Staten Island parks and backyards all summer – and had become a bit of a longicornus expert. Or at least a more experienced collector than Steve and me. Good to have her with us. We turned off the main path and onto a narrow trail into the woods. Still getting more larvae and an occasional larger tick, too. But now it felt more like the hunt was on.

 

In a few minutes, we emerged onto a wider grassy path with shady edges. This would become our classroom for the rest of the morning, a one hundred meter stretch of various grasses and shrubs. We were picking up more ticks now—mostly adult females, 4,5,6 … they were starting to accumulate in my collecting vial. They seemed to prefer shade over sun but then I spotted one questing on a stem right along the edge of the path about a foot from ground level, head pointing down. A curious questing pose; American dog ticks tend to quest head up. This one turned quickly to climb a little higher on the stick, it’s front pair of legs outstretched in hopeful anticipation that I might come closer. After that one, I started to look more closely.

That’s when a dark patch on a grass seed-head caught my eye. Most people would have thought they were seeds. But this was my first big surprise of the day, and something Pilar and Steve had never seen either; these were larval ticks — 50, 75, 150 – motionless, tightly clumped, seemingly knitted together almost like the overlapping scales on a snake, but tiny. And once we saw a few of these clumps, we started seeing them everywhere. In certain grassy patches there would be one every couple of feet—each of these likely the product of a single female egg batch. I thought,

“this is not a rare tick, at least not here.”

Surprise #1: Longicornus larvae hang out together on the tips of grasses, but like a bomb, they explode when something brushes by.

Even though I had spotted the adult female, and the larvae clumps, it seems my eyes aren’t what they used to be. As I was picking larger-than-larvae nymph stage ticks off of the flag, I tried separating what I thought were nympal Lone Star ticks from what I thought were nymph longhorned ticks. I even put them into separate vials. It seemed that I had collected twice as many Lone Stars than longhorned nymphs but when I checked under the microscope, I had some re-sorting to do, and as it turned out I had collected about equal numbers of both types of nymphs. Lone Star nymphs were still the fastest moving ticks but when they’re sitting still you really have to look hard at the mouthparts to tell them apart.

Surprise #2 – Without magnification, nymphal Asian longhorned ticks look very similar to nymphal Lone Star ticks.

Nymphs — Left: Asian longhorned tick, Right: Long Star tick
But my biggest surprise of the day was in witnessing first hand just how extensive this infestation appears to have become in presumably a fairly short period of time. First recognized just about one year ago on a single sheep at a single location in New Jersey, now we were wandering about one of several fairly extensive parks on Staten Island surrounded by a massive residential community in one of the most densely urban settings in the United States. We were passing dog walkers and day hikers all pretty much minding their own business and completely unaware of what we were finding. But what we were finding was all three active life stages of this longicornus tick…pretty much everywhere we looked. The edge of the parking lot, along walking trails, in the woods.
Surprise #3 – Asian longhorned ticks are way more established than I expected to find.
We know this tick is a little different than the ones we’re more familiar with – like, it doesn’t need a male to fertilize its eggs. There’s so much we don’t know though, like will it readily feed on humans and pets, what germs might it carry and transmit, will it be susceptible to tick prevention products? We had started the day wondering if we would find anything on our field trip, and in only 6 hours finished the day just wondering. Looks like we have a new tick, now found in 9 states, but from what we learned on this one field trip, that’s not likely to be where the reach of this tick stops, or where this story ends either.

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For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/07/19/rutgers-racing-to-contain-asian-longhorned-tick/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/08/08/an-invasive-new-tick-is-spreading-in-the-u-s/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/08/30/experts-still-worried-about-this-new-tick-since-it-doesnt-carry-lyme-disease-yet/

Here’s a home video of a female Asian Longhorn tick by Gloria Kim, a NJ resident:

 

 

 

Category:

Activism, Ticks, Uncategorized

As the Threat of Lyme Disease Rises, Why Hasn’t Research Funding Followed Suit?

https://undark.org/2018/09/06/lyme-research-funding/

As the Threat of Lyme Disease Rises, Why Hasn’t Research Funding Followed Suit?

The tick-borne illness now costs Americans up to $1.3 billion a year in medical expenses. It’s time for politicians to mount a response.
/ By Rocky Kistner Federal funding for Lyme disease research has stagnated in recent years.  Visual: NIH NIAID/Flickr
In 1987, Sherrill Franklin was pregnant and living in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, when she discovered a rash on her leg as big as a dinner plate. She had been bitten by a tick. She soon began to suffer fatigue, a sore throat, and severe arthritis that made her hands feel “like claws.” It took almost two years, and a three-week course of intravenous antibiotics, for her to get back on her feet.
Two decades later, Franklin got a second tick bite, and this time she developed more extensive neurological symptoms. She lost weight, experienced heart complications, and had to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance. She was eventually diagnosed with Graves’ disease, an immune disorder that her endocrinologist said could have been triggered by Lyme disease. Today, Franklin is still experiencing symptoms. After countless visits to health care experts, she says she’s spent $50,000 of her own money on medical help.

 

“The best thing about Lyme disease is you usually don’t die,” Franklin says. “The worst thing about it is that you don’t die.”

Franklin is not alone. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), annual cases of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses in the U.S. have skyrocketed to more than 300,000 — up from just 50,000 three decades ago. And those totals are thought to underestimate the true tally of patients who suffer from chronic tick-borne illnesses. A Johns Hopkins study estimates that Americans now spend up to $1.3 billion a year battling Lyme disease alone. Yet, the research that could help us better understand, treat, and prevent the disease remains woefully underfunded. That needs to change.

The recent explosion in Lyme disease cases stems from a perfect storm of climate and environmental change: Global warming has made northern latitudes more hospitable to the tiny blacklegged ticks that transmit the disease, and rapid deforestation and development have left large populations exposed to the wooded areas that harbor the ticks. The CDC reports that the number of tickborne illnesses in the U.S. has doubled from 2004 to 2016, and a new study finds that Lyme disease, once primarily a scourge of the northeast, has now spread to all 50 states. Economist Marcus Davidsson predicts that as many as one million Americans will be infected in 2018. And experts say it will only get worse.  (Please see my comment after article)

The growing medical crisis has exacted not only a physical but a financial toll as well. Policy experts say that, after accounting for lost productivity and hard-to-detect chronic conditions, the real costs of Lyme disease could be many times more than the $1.3 billion estimated in the Johns Hopkins study.

Laurie Johnson, executive director of the Climate Cost Project, and co-founder Sieren Ernst are working to home in on the true societal costs of Lyme disease. The team has been collecting surveys from Lyme disease patients to create a database of the patients’ medical expenses. So far, the results are astounding. Half of the respondents reported more than $30,000 in out-of-pocket expenditures on Lyme disease treatments, with some reporting more than $200,000.

“We believe the data is just the tip of the iceberg,” Ernst says.

What’s more, the rising threat of tick-borne disease has led Americans to take fewer trips outdoors — up to a billion fewer trips annually in the northeastern U.S. alone, according to a Yale study published last year. The authors of that study estimate that the economic burden associated with the lost trips could amount to as much as $5 billion annually.

As the societal costs of Lyme disease soar, funding for Lyme disease research remains in a rut. An unpublished draft report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Tick-Borne Disease Working Group finds that, while the National Institutes of Health and the CDC spend $53,571 and $14,054 respectively for each new case of HIV/AIDS, they spend just $90 and $35 per new case of Lyme disease.

“Federal funding for tick-borne disease today is orders of magnitude lower, compared to other health threats, and it has failed to increase as the problem has grown,” the report states.

Dr. John Aucott, chair of the working group and director of the Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Research Center, says the federal research community is not doing enough to find an accurate test and a cure for Lyme disease. He adds that the problem is compounded by controversies surrounding the symptoms of chronic Lyme disease, which makes it difficult for patients to get proper medical care.

In late August came a ray of hope from Capitol Hill. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer announced that, after five years of stagnant funding, the Senate had authorized a 12 percent increase for the CDC’s research on Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses for the 2019 fiscal year. The measure would raise allocations from $10.7 million to $12 million.

Still, patients like Sherrill Franklin say that’s sorely inadequate, and that the measure would do little to address chronic conditions that afflict millions like her. As the planet warms and populations grow, tick-borne illnesses are skyrocketing. It’s time for politicians to mount a serious response to the rising threat.

William “Rocky” Kistner is a multimedia journalist who writes about environmental issues and climate change. He publishes stories at www.TheRockyFiles.com and lives near Washington, D.C.

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**Comment**

Once again, according to independent tick researcher John Scott, the climate has absolutely nothing to do with the spread of ticks and therefore Lyme/MSIDS:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/08/13/study-shows-lyme-not-propelled-by-climate-change/ A recent study shows that warm winters are lethal to I. scapularis (black-legged) ticks. In fact, overwinter survival dropped to 33% when the snow melted. This has been substantiated by other researchers as well. Scott &amp; Scott, 2018, ticks and climate change, JVSM

This is an important distinction for a number of reasons:

  1. Earmarking tick/MSIDS research with the moniker “climate change” will divert precious money to the wrong subject matter when issues like accurate testing, education on how to clinically diagnose, settling the matter of pathogen persistence once and for all, and the need for research studying the cumulative effects of ALL of the pathogens involved on the human body would get a great start in helping patients.  But, there are hundreds of other topics as well.  
  2. Scott goes as far as to state the climate change issue is a “red herring” to divert attention away from the fact nothing has been done to help patients in over 40 years and is actually part of a “nefarious plot.”  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/08/14/canadian-tick-expert-climate-change-is-not-behind-lyme-disease/
  3. Scott, infected himself, has determined black legged ticks require 14 hours to molt to the next stage, something he dubs “photo period.”  Light has much more of an impact on ticks than climate as ticks are marvelous ecoadaptors and will seek out leaf litter and snow when conditions become harsh.
  4. Scott offers that yearly bidirectional, songbird migration in spring and fall is behind tick expansion and that the climate change model actually reflects migratory flight not warmer futuristic temperatures.
  5. Research on migratory birds and their impacts on tick expansion would be a far better topic to spend money on than more climate data.
  6. We need to know if other insects can transmit this.  To date, researchers smugly point to a 30 year old study and say it can’t, yet patients all over the world have far different experiences:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/03/01/strides-in-lyme-research-links-to-mosquitos-as-carriers/.  The potential for ALL blood sucking insects to transmit all or some of the pathogens commonly blamed on ticks is very real.  And just because it can’t be seen doesn’t mean it isn’t there.  These are notoriously stealthy pathogens who thrive on hiding and avoiding detection.
  7. We all know that MS, Lupus, Fibro, ALS, dementia, and Alzheimer’s can be undiagnosed Lyme as well as the fact that according to a prominent Wisconsin Lyme doctor, 80% of his PANS/PANDAS patients have Lyme/MSIDS as well.  Research on these topics would again, be far more helpful than the same – o- same-o climate data that’s been collected for years.
  8. Since many couples are infected and they’ve actually found borrelia in semen and vaginal secretions, we need to know if this is a STD:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/02/24/pcos-lyme-my-story/  We also need the medical community to admit it’s congenital and spread via breast milk https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/06/19/33-years-of-documentation-of-maternal-child-transmission-of-lyme-disease-and-congenital-lyme-borreliosis-a-review/ and https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/05/24/new-berlin-mom-given-life-altering-lyme-disease-diagnoses-after-pregnancy/  These are practical day to day issues that require answers.  Knowledge is power and we need it!  I literally could go on and on to infinity here but these 7 issues are screaming for research.  Nobody is touching this with a 10 foot pole yet life marches on with the very real probability we are transmitting this is far more ways than the dastardly black legged tick.  We need to know.
We needed to know these answers 40 years ago.

Category:

Activism, Lyme, research, Testing, Ticks, Transmission

Bartonella Mastomydis -Novel Species

First proposed in 2016,   https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295893002_Bartonella_spp_in_Small_Mammals_Benin, phenotypic, phylogenetic, and genomic analyses have led researchers to formally propose the creation of Bartonella mastomydia sp.nov. that contains the strain 008 isolated from Senegalese M. erythroleucus (Guinea multimammate mouse) blood samples.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6098214/

Bartonella Mastomydis Strain 008Bartonella mastomydis strain 008 (FEI Company, Limeil-Brévannes, France) 

Noncontiguous finished genome sequence and description of Bartonella mastomydis sp. nov.

M. Dahmani,1 G. Diatta,2 N. Labas,1 A. Diop,1 H. Bassene,2 D. Raoult,1 L. Granjon,3 F. Fenollar,4 and O. Mediannikov1,∗

Abstract

Bartonella mastomydis sp. nov. strain 008 is the type strain of B. mastomydis sp. nov., a new species within the genus Bartonella. This strain was isolated from Mastomys erythroleucus rodents trapped in the Sine-Saloum region of Senegal. Here we describe the features of this organism, together with the complete genome sequence and its annotation. The 2 044 960 bp long genomes with 38.44% G + C content contains 1674 protein-coding and 42 RNA genes, including three rRNA genes.

Introduction

Just over a century ago, the first historical record of the emerging Bartonella genus was made during World War I, when a million frontline troops were shown to be plagued by a disease later known as trench fever. This was caused by the louse-borne bacterium now known as Bartonella quintana [1]. Bartonella are small facultative intracellular, vector-transmitted, Gram-negative, haemotropic bacilli, classified within the class of α-proteobacteria [2]….The Bartonellaceae family (Gieszczykiewicz 1939) [4] contains 35 species and three subspecies (http://www.bacterio.net/) as of 1 August 2017 [5]. Bartonellae usually exist in two specific habitats: the gut of the obligately blood-sucking arthropod vector and the bloodstream of the mammalian host [1]. Among the 38 recognized Bartonella species, 17 have been described as pathogenic in humans [6]. In humans, Bartonella bacteria are among the most described as being associated with endocarditis or cardiopathy. In animal hosts, a wide array of clinical syndromes, as well as asymptomatic infection and endocarditis, have been described [6], [7], [8].

New species and subspecies are constantly being proposed. Candidate species belonging to the genus Bartonella from a wide range of animal reservoirs have been described but not yet assigned new species designations [1]. Parasitism by bartonellae is widespread among small mammals. Potentially new Bartonella species infecting bat communities were reported in Madagascar [9], Kenya [10], Puerto Rico [11] and French Guiana [12]. Rodents and insectivores were showed to maintain bartonellae infections. Additionally, a large number of partially characterized Bartonella have been isolated from rodents in Southeast Asia [13], South Africa [14], [15], Europe, North and South America [16], Nigeria [17], the Republic of Congo and Tanzania [16]. In Senegal, West Africa, using the criteria proposed by La Scola et al. [18] based on the multilocus sequence analyses of four genes and the intergenic spacer (ITS) as a tool to the description of bartonellae, three new bartonellae were isolated and described: Bartonella senegalensis, Bartonella massiliensis from the soft tick Ornithodoros sonrai[13] and Bartonella davoustii from cattle [19].

We sought to describe an additional Bartonella species isolated from small mammals in the region of Sine-Saloum, in western Senegal [20]. In this rural region, the biotype is favourable to the spread of commensal mammals harbouring pathogenic microorganisms and is often found in close contact with humans. This situation increases the risk of human and animal transmission of infectious disease from rodent-associated tick-borne pathogens. This work describes the genome sequence of the proposed candidate Bartonella mastomydis strain 008 isolated from Mastomys erythroleucususing a polyphasic approach combining matrix-assisted desorption ionization–time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) and genomic properties, as well as next-generation sequencing technology to complete description of a potentially new species [21].

Bartonella mastomydis is sensitive to amoxicillin, amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, oxacillin, imipenem, rifampicin, nitrofurantoin, doxycycline, linezolid, tobramycin, gentamycin, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, fosfomycin and ciprofloxacin. Bartonella mastomydis is resistant to metronidazole and colistin.

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**Comment**

I once heard it said that every animal species probably has their own strain of Bartonella.  All I know is many Lyme/MSIDS patients struggle with it as it is extremely tenacious.  Here, we see a novel species in Senegalese mice.  While there are 17 known species of Bart that are pathogenic to humans, as this article points out, more are continually being discovered.

Known for causing heart issues in humans, it does oh so much more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/01/03/bartonella-treatment/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2011/09/25/the-bartonella-checklist-copyrighted-2011-james-schaller-md-version-11/

Normally thought of as a Lyme “co-infection,” some LLMD’s state that Bartonella can be more debilitating than Lyme.  This doctor says Bartonella is the “new Lyme”:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/05/07/fox-news-bartonella-is-the-new-lyme-disease/

Category:

Bartonella, Heart Issues, research, Ticks, Treatment