Archive for the ‘Ticks’ Category

Diagnosed with Cellulitis – Child Had Lyme – Docs Said it was a “Non-relevant Tick Bite”

http://www.kcra.com/article/mother-hopes-parents-see-side-effects-of-lyme-disease-after-daughter-suffers-tick-bite/22122176

NEW SALEM, Pa. —
Morgan Rogers, 4, loves to play outside. But recently, she’s been spending more and more time inside, after being bitten by a tick sometime last month.

Watch the video in the above link to see the full story.

For more on the story:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/07/06/non-relevant-tick-bite-puts-child-in-hospital/

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**Comment**

The medical world baffled yet again.

Treat each and every tick bite as seriously as a heart attack.  Everyone knows prompt treatment makes THE difference, so why do doctors even hesitate?

If you are bitten, follow this advice:  https://iladef.org/education/how-to-handle-a-tick-bite/

ILADS recommends that prophylaxis (preventive treatment) be discussed with all who have had a blacklegged tick bite. An appropriate course of antibiotics has been shown to prevent the onset of infection.

When the decision is made to use antibiotic prophylaxis, ILADS recommends 20 days of doxycycline (provided there are no contraindications). The decision to treat a blacklegged tick bite with antibiotics often depends on where in the country the bite occurred, whether there was evidence that the tick had begun feeding, and the age of the person who was bitten. Based on the available evidence, and provided that it is safe to do so, ILADS recommends a 20-day course of doxycycline.

Patients should also know that although doxycycline can prevent cases of Lyme disease, ticks in some areas carry multiple pathogens, some of which, including Babesia, Powassan virus, and Bartonella, are not responsive to doxycycline. This means a person could contract a tick-borne illness despite receiving antibiotic prophylaxis for their known tick bite.

ILADS recommends against single-dose doxycycline. Some doctors prescribe a single 200 mg dose of doxycycline for a known bite. However, as discussed in detail in the guidelines, this practice is based on a flawed study that has never been replicated. Read more in the ILADS treatment guidelines.

The bottom line: If you have been bitten by a blacklegged tick, you should discuss immediate antibiotic treatment with your provider as a possible course of action.

If you do receive prophylactic treatment, be cautious in in interpreting the results of subsequent testing. Widely-used blood tests look for antibodies to Borrelia burgdorferi, but early treatment can prevent the body from mounting an antibody response. Should you become infected despite prophylactic treatment, subsequent tests results could be falsely negative.

Whether or not you choose to get prophylactic treatment after a tick bite, it is imperative to be vigilant for symptoms that might suggest active infection. Common Lyme symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pain, and fatigue.

Here’s the dealeo – if you want to play Russian roulette and take a chance, that’s your business.  They are now saying that around 50% of ticks in endemic areas are infected, but ticks are spreading into areas they’ve never been “found” before and they are often coinfected with many things.  Lyme is just the tip of the ice-berg.  If you are diligent with probiotics and diet, your body should handle the doxycycline (or whatever antimicrobial used) just fine.  This prompt treatment is a bit like insurance.  Not having insurance is hunky-dory until it’s your house that burns down.  

FYI:  My husband and I have probably paid $150K for the two of us to be treated for Lyme/MSIDS.  That’s a chunk of change and frankly had we been treated with 20 days of doxy, we probably wouldn’t have had to spend it.

For ILADS treatment guidelines:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1586/14787210.2014.940900

For Lyme Treatments from numerous practitioners:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/02/13/lyme-disease-treatment/

 

 

 

 

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Ticks, Treatment

Citizen Scientists Help Track Tick Borne Illness Exposure

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180712141710.htm

Who got bit? By mailing in 16,000 ticks, citizen scientists help track disease exposures

Study offers new insight into potential exposure to tick-borne diseases

Date:  July 12, 2018
Source:  Colorado State University
Summary:
A bite from a disease-carrying tick can transmit a serious, potentially fatal infection, such as Lyme disease. But many ticks go unnoticed and unreported. Now, with the help of citizen scientists, ecologists are offering better insight into people’s and animals’ potential exposure to tick-borne diseases — not just the disease reporting and prevalence that’s only tracked when people get sick.
Western black-legged ticks.
Credit: Ervic Aquino/California Department of Public Health

A bite from a disease-carrying tick can transmit a serious, potentially fatal infection, such as Lyme disease. But many ticks go unnoticed and unreported.

Now, with the help of citizen scientists, ecologists at Colorado State University and Northern Arizona University are offering better insight into people’s and animals’ potential exposure to tick-borne diseases — not just the disease reporting and prevalence tracking that only occur when people get sick.

The result is a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. The team was funded by the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to informing the public about Lyme disease and finding a cure. Foundation officials urge people to take tick bites seriously, since early detection is key to treating most conditions.

The study’s lead authors are Daniel Salkeld, a research scientist in CSU’s Department of Biology, and longtime collaborator Nathan Nieto of Northern Arizona University.

“Our study may be a new way of understanding exposure to tick-borne diseases,” explained Salkeld, a disease ecologist. “Normally the approach is to rely on reported disease cases, or to look at ticks in natural habitats. Our data represent that in-between, middle ground: It shows when people or animals got bitten, and where, and what they got exposed to.”

Salkeld and Nieto’s study examined over 16,000 ticks sent in by citizen scientists from 49 states (all but Alaska) and Puerto Rico. Nearly 90 percent of the ticks were reported to have been removed from either humans or dogs. The researchers tested for several bacteria, including those that cause Lyme disease and babesiosis. One of the pathogens they tested for, Borrelia miyamotoi, was discovered relatively recently, and is not typically tracked by public health officials.

In their data, the researchers found 83 counties, in 24 states, where ticks carrying disease-causing bacteria had never been previously documented. The scientists’ original goal was to collect about 2,000 ticks, and they expected most to come from California’s San Francisco Bay Area. The nationwide response to their experiment underscores the public’s intense interest in better understanding tick diseases.

“The overwhelming participation from residents throughout the country and the surprising number of counties impacted demonstrates that a great need exists throughout the country for this information,” said Nieto, who led the diagnostic testing of each tick received in the mail. “This study offers a unique and very valuable perspective, as it looks at risk to humans that goes beyond the physician-reported infection rates and involved ticks that were found on or near people.“

The researchers stress that citizen science data has limitations; some of their findings may be tied to human error, or lack of access to information. For example, the citizen scientists reported where they lived, and where the ticks were found, but not where they had traveled recently.

Tick scientists like Salkeld and Nieto can typically collect around 100 ticks for a localized study. Inviting citizen scientists to send in ticks opened up a whole new way of seeing how such ticks are distributed, and their activity patterns. Approaches like this could lead to new insights such as how diseases spread, and new human pathogens yet to be discovered.

“For example, we could start to look at what species of ticks are active, when, and where,” Salkeld said. “And how does this differ from across the north or south, or the Midwest to California? There could be all kinds of subtle variations.”

Story Source:

Materials provided by Colorado State University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Nathan C. Nieto, W. Tanner Porter, Julie C. Wachara, Thomas J. Lowrey, Luke Martin, Peter J. Motyka, Daniel J. Salkeld. Using citizen science to describe the prevalence and distribution of tick bite and exposure to tick-borne diseases in the United States. PLOS ONE, 2018; 13 (7): e0199644 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0199644
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Related article:
  • ticks in places they weren’t supposed to be
  • ticks are born carrying disease and do not require a blood meal to pick it up 
  • ALL life stages of common ticks (deer, Western black-legged, and lone star) carry the bacteria that cases Lyme disease
  • they found Babesia in 26 counties across 10 states which
  • isn’t even a reportable illness to the public health department  
  • all of this blows holes in commonly held doctrine 

Canada is also making use of citizen scientists for the tick borne illness problem:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/04/10/canadian-citizen-scientists-helping-with-tick-surveillance/

 

 

 

Category:

Activism, Babesia, Borrelia Miyamotoi (Relapsing Fever Group), Lyme, research, Testing, Ticks

Study Finds 27 New Sequence Types of Borreliella afzelii – 2 Significant For EM’s Whereas Another Significant For Neuroborreliosis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29954419/

Multilocus sequence typing of clinical Borreliella afzelii strains: population structure and differential ability to disseminate in humans.

Gallais F, et al.
Parasit Vectors. 2018 Jun 28;11(1):374. doi: 10.1186/s13071-018-2938-x.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Lyme borreliosis in humans results in a range of clinical manifestations, thought to be partly due to differences in the pathogenicity of the infecting strain. This study compared European human clinical strains of Borreliella afzelii (previously named Borrelia afzelii) using multilocus sequence typing (MLST) to determine their spatial distribution across Europe and to establish whether there are associations between B. afzelii genotypes and specific clinical manifestations of Lyme borreliosis. For this purpose, typing was performed on 63 strains, and data on a further 245 strains were accessed from the literature.

RESULTS: All 308 strains were categorized into 149 sequence types (STs), 27 of which are described here for the first time. Phylogenetic and goeBURST analyses showed short evolutionary distances between strains. Although the main STs differed among the countries with the largest number of strains of interest (Germany, the Netherlands, France and Slovenia), the B. afzelii clinical strains were less genetically structured than those previously observed in the European tick population. Two STs were found significantly more frequently in strains associated with clinical manifestations involving erythema migrans, whereas another ST was found significantly more frequently in strains associated with disseminated manifestations, especially neuroborreliosis.

CONCLUSIONS: The MLST profiles showed low genetic differentiation between B. afzelii strains isolated from patients with Lyme borreliosis in Europe. Also, clinical data analysis suggests the existence of lineages with differential dissemination properties in humans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category:

Lyme, research, Testing, Ticks

Rutgers Racing to Contain Asian Longhorned Tick

https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2018/07/this_is_how_dna_helps_rutgers_scientists_crack_the.html

It spreads SFTS (sever fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome), “an emerging hemorrhagic fever,” causing fever, fatigue, headache, nausea, muscle pain, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, disease of the lymph nodes, and conjunctival congestion, but the potential impact of this tick on tickborne illness is not yet known. In other parts of the world, this Longhorned tick, also called the East Asian or bush tick, has been associated with several tickborne diseases, such as spotted fever rickettsioses, Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, and Borrelia, the causative agent of Lyme Disease.

For a 2016 literature review on SFTS: http://infectious-diseases-and-treatment.imedpub.com/research-advances-on-epidemiology-of-severefever-with-thrombocytopenia-syndrome-asystematic-review-of-the-literature.php?aid=17986
Although the clinical symptoms of SFTS and HGA are similar to each other, but the treatment methods of the two diseases are totally different. Doctors notice that the biggest difference between the clinical symptom of SFTS and HGA is that SFTS patients generally without skin rash, the dermorrhagia is also not seriously, and few massive hemorrhage cases were reported [23]. It is also reported that SFTS patients had gastrointestinal symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, which are rarely observed in HGA patients [2]. So these differences can be used as the auxiliary basis of differential diagnosis.
At present, there is still no specific vaccine or antiviral therapy for SFTSV infection. Supportive treatment, including plasma, platelet, granulocyte colony stimulating factor (GCSF), recombinant human interleukin 11, and gamma globulin is the most essential part of case treatment [44]. Meanwhile, some measures were taken to maintain water, electrolyte balance and treat complications are also very important.
Ribavirin is reported to be effective for treating Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) infections and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, but it is still inadequate to judge the effect of ribavirin on SFTS patients because of the study limitation without adequate parameters were investigated [45]. Host immune responses play an important role in determining the severity and clinical outcome in patients with infection by SFTSV.
For Viral treatment options: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/03/28/combating-viruses/

And lastly, please know ticks parasitize one another, potentially spreading all manner of diseases to humans.  This fact also shoots holes in the regurgitated mantra that only certain ticks carry certain pathogens.  If they are feasting on one another, they can potentially infect each other and then us:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/03/07/tick-bites-tick-hyperparasitism/

 

 

Category:

Activism, Anaplasmosis, Ehrlichiosis, Lyme, research, Testing, Ticks, Transmission, Viruses

Asian Tick Now in New York

https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/health/a-new-dangerous-tick-found-in-new-york/71-574781863

The New York state Health Department has found the Asian “long horned” (Haemaphysalis longicornis) or Bush tick in Westchester County.

Normally found in Asia, this tick clones itself and spreads rapidly.  It has been found in New Jersey, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and now New York.

If seen, contact the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets Division of Animal Industry at 518-457-3502 or dai@agriculture.ny.gov.

For more on the Asian tick:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/03/01/asian-ticks-mysteriously-turn-up-in-new-jersey/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/04/21/ticks-from-hell-survived-the-winter/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/06/27/tick-discovery-highlights-how-few-answers-we-have-about-these-pests-in-the-u-s/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/06/12/first-longhorned-tick-confirmed-in-arkansas/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/05/26/tick-from-hell-now-sited-in-west-virginia/

So far we know it can spread SFTS (sever fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome), “an emerging hemorrhagic fever,” causing fever, fatigue, headache, nausea, muscle pain, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, disease of the lymph nodes, and conjunctival congestion, but the potential impact of this tick on tickborne illness is not yet known. In other parts of the world, this Longhorned tick, also called the East Asian or bush tick, has been associated with several tickborne diseases, such as spotted fever rickettsioses, Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, and Borrelia, the causative agent of Lyme Disease.

So, this is no benign little sucker…..

Category:

Activism, Anaplasmosis, Ehrlichiosis, Lyme, Ticks, Viruses