Archive for the ‘Ticks’ Category

New UVA Study Tentatively Links Ticks to Heart Disease

https://news.virginia.edu/content/new-uva-study-tentatively-links-ticks-heart-disease?utm_source=DailyReport&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news

NEW UVA STUDY TENTATIVELY LINKS TICKS TO HEART DISEASE

The bite of the lone star tick had previously been shown to cause an allergy to red meat. Now it is linked with an increased risk of heart disease.

June 14, 2018 Josh Barney, jdb9a@virginia.edu

University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have linked sensitivity to an allergen in red meat – a sensitivity spread by tick bites – with a buildup of fatty plaque in the arteries of the heart. This buildup may increase the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

The bite of the lone star tick can cause people to develop an allergic reaction to red meat. However, many people who do not exhibit symptoms of the allergy are still sensitive to the allergen found in meat. UVA’s new study linked sensitivity to the allergen with the increased plaque buildup, as measured by a blood test.

The researchers emphasize that their findings are preliminary, but say further research is warranted.

tick_story_da_inline_01
The research team drew from both allergists and cardiologists, and included, from left, Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, Dr. Coleen McNamara, Dr. Jeff Wilson and Anh Nguyen. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

“This novel finding from a small group of subjects examined at the University of Virginia raises the intriguing possibility that asymptomatic allergy to red meat may be an under-recognized factor in heart disease,” said study leader Dr. Coleen McNamara of UVA’s Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center and UVA’s Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. “These preliminary findings underscore the need for further clinical studies in larger populations from diverse geographic regions.”

Allergens and Clogged Arteries

Looking at 118 patients, the researchers determined that those sensitive to the meat allergen had 30 percent more plaque accumulation inside their arteries than those without the sensitivity. Further, a higher percentage of the plaques had features characteristic of unstable plaques that are more likely to cause heart attacks.

With the meat allergy, people become sensitized to alpha-gal, a type of sugar found in red meat. People with the symptomatic form of the allergy can develop hives, stomach upset, have trouble breathing or exhibit other symptoms three to eight hours after consuming meat from mammals. (Poultry and fish do not trigger a reaction.)

What’s it like to develop a meat allergy?   https://makingofmedicine.virginia.edu/2018/03/29/the-meat-allergy-whats-it-like/

Other people can be sensitive to alpha-gal and not develop symptoms. In fact, far more people are thought to be in this latter group. For example, up to 20 percent of people in Central Virginia and other parts of the Southeast may be sensitized to alpha-gal, but not show symptoms.

The allergy to alpha-gal was first reported in 2009 by Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, who heads UVA’s Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, and his colleague Dr. Scott Commins. Since then, there have been increasing numbers of cases of the meat allergy reported across the U.S., especially as the lone star tick’s territory grows. Previously found predominantly in the Southeast, the tick has now spread west and north, all the way into Canada.

UVA’s new study suggests that doctors could develop a blood test to benefit people sensitive to the allergen.

“This work raises the possibility that in the future a blood test could help predict individuals, even those without symptoms of red meat allergy, who might benefit from avoiding red meat. However, at the moment, red meat avoidance is only indicated for those with allergic symptoms,” said researcher Dr. Jeff Wilson of UVA’s allergy division.

Findings Published

The work represents a significant collaboration between allergy and cardiology experts at UVA. The researchers have published their findings in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, a journal of the American Heart Association. The research team consisted of Wilson, Anh Nguyen, Alexander Schuyler, Commins, Angela Taylor, Platts-Mills and McNamara.

The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, grants KO8-AI085190, K23-HL093118, RO1-AI 20565, PO1-HL55798, RO1-HL136098-01 and RO1-HL107490.

MEDIA CONTACT

Josh Barney
UVA Health System
jdb9a@virginia.edu 434-243-1988

________________

For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/05/04/arkansas-woman-develops-deadly-meat-allergy-after-tick-bite/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/01/12/tick-related-red-meat-allergy-found-in-minnesota-wisconsin/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/06/27/alpha-gal-perioperative-management/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/01/16/a-strange-itch-trouble-breathing-then-anaphylactic-shock/

 

Category:

Activism, Alpha Gal Meat Allergy, research, Testing, Ticks, Transmission

Surveillance For Heartland & Bourbon Viruses in Eastern Kansas

https://academic.oup.com/jme/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jme/tjy103/5045816

Surveillance for Heartland and Bourbon Viruses in Eastern Kansas, June 2016

Savage HM, Godsey MS Jr, Tatman J, Burkhalter KL, Hamm A, Panella NA, Ghosh A, Raghavan RK.
Journal of Medical Entomology, online first 2018 Jun 27.

Abstract

In June 2016, we continued surveillance for tick-borne viruses in eastern Kansas following upon a larger surveillance program initiated in 2015 in response to a fatal human case of Bourbon virus (BRBV) (Family
Orthomyxoviridae: Genus Thogotovirus). In 4 d, we collected 14,193 ticks representing four species from four sites.

Amblyomma americanum (L.) (Acari: Ixodidae) accounted for nearly all ticks collected (n = 14,116, 99.5%), and the only other species identified were Amblyomma maculatum Koch (Acari: Ixodidae),
Dermacentor variables (Say) (Acari: Ixodidae) and Ixodes scapulars Say (Acari: Ixodidae). All ticks were tested for both BRBV and Heartland virus (Family Bunyaviridae: Genus Phlebovirus) in 964 pools.

Five Heartland virus positive tick pools were detected and confirmed by real-time reverse transcription PCR (rRT-PCR), while all pools tested negative for BRBV. Each Heartland positive pool was composed of 25 A. americium nymphs with positive pools collected at three different sites in Bourbon County.

A. americanum is believed to be the primary vector of both Heartland and BRBVs to humans based upon multiple detections of virus in field-collected ticks, its abundance, and its aggressive feeding behavior on mammals including humans. However, it is possible that A. americium encounters viremic vertebrate hosts of BRBV less frequently than viremic hosts of Heartland virus, or that BRBV is less efficiently
passed among ticks by co-feeding, or less efficiently passed vertically from infected female ticks to their offspring resulting in lower field infection rates.

_____________

For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/01/one-tick-bite-could-put-you-at-risk-for-at-least-6-different-diseases/ (Actually it’s 18 and counting)

Category:

research, Testing, Ticks, Transmission, Viruses

Summer Campers Face Deadly Ticks & Mosquitoes

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/24/health/bug-disease-preparedness/index.html

Summer campers face deadly ticks and mosquitoes

By Elizabeth Cohen and John Bonifield, CNN
June 25, 2018

US ‘not ready’ for potentially deadly bug diseases

In many parts of the United States, this weekend marks the start of summer sleepaway camp season, which means swimming, arts and crafts, marshmallow roasts — and, very often, ticks.

Of the more than 1,600 overnight camps that are members of the American Camp Association, more than a third are in New England and the mid-Atlantic states, where Lyme disease is particularly prevalent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to a May CDC report, cases of vector-borne diseases — those caused by viruses and bacteria carried by ticks, mosquitoes and other bugs — tripled in the United States from 2004 to 2016.

For years, experts have voiced concern that many local public health agencies are unprepared to control such pests and limit the spread of these diseases which include Lyme disease, dengue fever and Zika.

“I started to look into it, and the numbers were on the increase and didn’t show any signs of stopping,” said Lauren Rutkowski, who with her husband, Joel, owns Indian Head Camp for children in Equinunk, Pennsylvania. “As a mom and a camp director, I was concerned.”

Every summer from 2010 to 2014, seven or eight campers had confirmed or suspected tick bites at Indian Head, and each summer, three or four of those children tested positive for Lyme disease, according to Rutkowski. Lyme disease is a bacterial infection transmitted through bites from infected ticks, and if left untreated, it can spread to joints, the heart and the nervous system.

She said it’s not known whether the children contracted the disease from the tick bite they got at camp or from a previous tick bite at home.

In 2014, her son, Oakley, was bitten by a tick at the family’s camp, which hosts 650 children every summer. He did not contract Lyme disease.

The next year, Rutkowski hired a new service that helps fight ticks, including spraying the perimeter of the camp with pesticides and offering advice on how to get rid of habitats where ticks breed.

Since then, not a single camper is known to have been bitten by a tick, Rutkowski said.

Now, 123 camps use the service, Ivy Oaks Analytics, according to Isaiah Ham, who started the company after one of his summer campers contracted Lyme disease from a tick bite.

Ham, then a college student working as a counselor, said he wasn’t pleased with the camp’s response.

“The camp just kind of shrugged and thought it was just inevitable, like a hurricane; it was just part of being in the outdoors,” Ham remembered.

It’s unknown how many children are bitten by ticks at summer camps or how many camps are using services to mitigate the pests, according to Sam Borek, president of the New York/New Jersey section of the American Camp Association.

Camps don’t exist in a vacuum, of course, and there are concerns that state public health departments aren’t doing enough to fight diseases caused by ticks, mosquitoes and other pests.

“Mosquitoes, ticks, fleas can all carry very serious diseases that are life-threatening,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, a professor at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

A report from the National Association of County and City Health Officials says 84% of programs to control diseases from mosquitoes need improvement. In 18 states, every program is falling short.

These programs often aren’t well-funded and aren’t equipped to do proper surveillance or prevention, Redlener said.

“We’re, simply put, not ready, and we should be,” he said.

Redlener and other experts have criticized President Trump for ignoring climate change, part of the reason for the proliferation of pests that carry diseases. (Please see my comment at end of article)

“We have to wonder why the president and the administration [are] not taking this issue more seriously,” he said.

The White House declined to comment on climate change, referring questions to the CDC, which makes clear on its website that climate change increases the number and geographic range of disease-carrying insects and ticks.

The White House statement also said the President takes such diseases seriously, requesting more than $49 million to fight them next year, an increase of $11 million over this year.

Back at Indian Head Camp, as the campers arrive on Saturday, they’re hoping for another summer without a tick bite.

“We’re ready,” Rutkowski said. “We just can’t wait to get them here.”

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**Comment**

There are many things to complain about; however, “climate change” in regards to ticks and proliferation of disease isn’t one of them:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/08/14/canadian-tick-expert-climate-change-is-not-behind-lyme-disease/

How about we start doing good, unbiased science and get some answers?  

And there are far more guilty people (CDC, IDSA, and patent holders sitting on boards making decisions for patients) behind the denial of this plague and far more responsible for it than the president:

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/11/15/lyme-patients-file-lawsuit-against-idsa-and-insurers-over-treatment-denials/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/06/14/corruption-human-rights-violations-against-lyme-doctors-scientists-and-parents-now-on-united-nations-record/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/10/13/1st-officially-recognized-report-on-violations-of-lyme-patients-human-rights-is-released-updating-borreliosis-diagnostic-codes/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/05/15/news-release-on-57-1-million-lyme-disease-lawsuit-filed-against-cdc/

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Ticks, Uncategorized

Tick Discovery Highlights How Few Answers We Have About These Pests in the U.S.

Tick Discovery Highlights How Few Answers We Have about These Pests in the U.S.

As Lyme and other tick-borne diseases worsen in the U.S., new efforts seek to fill in the gaps

By Melinda Wenner Moyer on June 26, 2018

Last August Tadhgh Rainey, division manager at the Hunterdon County Division of Public Health Services in Flemington, N.J., received an odd phone call. An assistant in a nearby building excitedly explained to him that a woman had walked into their office covered in tiny ticks—far more than they had ever seen on one person.

“She’s really scared—and now we’re kind of scared, and her pants are in our freezer,” the assistant said.

The woman, a local farmer, had been shearing her sheep …

For more of the story go here:  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tick-discovery-highlights-how-few-answers-we-have-about-these-bugs-in-the-u-s/

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

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Ticks

Report: Lyme Disease on Rise But Doctors Remain Skeptical

https://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/866576?section=health&keywords=lyme-disease-on-rise-misdiagnose-

Report: Lyme Disease on Rise But Doctors Remain Skeptical

New Clothing Offers Protection Against Ticks

(Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)

Ticks in small bottles rest on Tick ID Carrier information cards June 29, 2004 in New York City. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said the number of cases reported annually has more than doubled since 1991. Lyme disease was first diagnosed in the 1970s in patients around the town of Lyme, Conn. 

By Todd Beamon
Saturday, 16 Jun 2018

The federal government reports that cases of Lyme disease are on the rise, but many patients and researchers are finding that physicians are skeptical in diagnosing the deer tick-borne disease.

“It’s very serious,” Marina Makous, a family medicine doctor in Exton, Pennsylvania, told NBC News. She is a former fellow at the Neuroinflammatory Diseases Center at Columbia University’s Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Research Center.

“There is an underappreciation of the seriousness of this illness, especially when [physicians] don’t treat patients with Lyme disease on a daily basis,” she said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an updated warning last month that insect-borne diseases, especially those spread by ticks, are on the rise, having more than doubled from 2004 to 2016.

Warmer weather is an important cause of the increased cases reported to the agency, according to The New York Times.

“You can think of ticks as dirty needles,” Makous told NBC. “They carry multiple pathogens and can transmit other things that make it more difficult for the immune system to fight off Lyme disease.”

Lyme disease is caused by a spiral-shaped bacteria called Borelia burgdorferi. It is found in the saliva of the blacklegged tick, more commonly known as a deer tick.

The bacteria spreads rapidly and has complex survival mechanisms, according to the NBC report.

Though most physicians believe it can be eradicated with antibiotics, the bacteria has been shown to return after treatment in the blood and tissue of animals and humans.

Numerous patients say they live with chronic, persistent symptoms — and have had difficulty being diagnosed by their doctors.

“I’m one of the rare cases where you have an unequivocal diagnosis,” Porochista Khakpour, a New York writer and author, told NBC. “People have put that at less than 10 percent.”

After 12 years of trying to find out why she was having a range of physical ailments — from convulsions to debilitating fatigue — she learned in 2012 that she had Lyme disease after expensive blood tests from a private blood-testing company.

In her new book, “Sick: A Memoir,” Khakpour, 40, wrote that Lyme disease” is thought of as the disease of hypochondriacs and alarmists and rich people who have the money and time to go chasing the diagnosis.

Khakpour was bitten by a deer tick — and she is among the fewer than 50 percent of people with Lyme who do not remember being infected that way or seeing the famed “bulls-eye” rash typically associated with the disease.

She added that doctors often diagnosed her problems as psychiatric.

“But that didn’t explain to me why I would have fever, or why my body would be in convulsions, why I would develop these huge allergies,” Khakpour told NBC. “Then they’d say, ‘Well, the mind is very strong you know.'”

Makous called Lyme disease “the great imitator,” noting that initial treatments “may blunt the development of antibodies.”

Future tests could turn up negative, she added, though the bacteria may linger in the body.

“It’s a multi-systemic disease,” Makous explained. “There aren’t specific symptoms unique only to Lyme.

“It can look like stroke, like Alzheimer’s, like vasculitis, like neuropathy.“

Makous noted that singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson’s Lyme disease was initially misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s in 2016.

Psychiatric symptoms like depression and anxiety could also result from Lyme — and Makous said she has seen increased signs of suicide in such patients, along with facial weakness, headaches, sensory disturbances and cognitive problems.

Khakpour, however, worries that she may never get truly better, telling NBC that she has resigned herself to living with the long-term effects of Lyme disease.

“It never seems to go away,” she said, “the feeling that as much as I achieve or as strong as I can be, this disease is smarter.”

________________

For more:  

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/06/09/alzheimers-byproduct-of-infection/  (Link to Kris Kristofferson’s case.  Lyme treatment turned the Alzheimer’s completely around)

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/01/18/a-bug-for-alzheimers/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/03/25/a-brief-history-of-neuroborreliosis-research-dementia-an-inside-look-at-two-researchers/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/06/10/the-coming-pandemic-of-lyme-dementia/

Psychological symptoms:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2015/10/18/psychiatric-lymemsids/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/05/19/panic-attacks-may-be-lyme-msids/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/03/07/obsessive-compulsive-symptoms-in-adults-with-ld/

My only beef is the repeated mantra that warmer weather is to blame for increased infection rates.  That’s pure conjecture and many disagree with that premise: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/08/14/canadian-tick-expert-climate-change-is-not-behind-lyme-disease/

 

 

 

 

Category:

Activism, Alzheimer's, Lyme, Psychological Aspects, Ticks