Contagion Live
Published on Jul 31, 2017
Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLFAPA; Peter L. Salgo, MD; Samuel Shor, MD, FACP; Leonard Sigal, MD; and Patricia V. Smith, discuss the prevalence of Lyme disease and some of the reasons why it may be underdiagnosed.
*Congenital transmission
*Coinfections make Lyme much worse
*Ages 5-9 and 10-14 are the highest risk category
*Much misdiagnosis due to faulty tests
http://mainepublic.org/post/battle-against-ticks-and-lyme-disease-scientists-look-skies#stream/0
As we head into the Maine outdoors this summer, the all-too-familiar warnings about how to avoid ticks reverberate in many of our heads.
Stay on the trail. Steer clear of wooded and brushy areas where ticks congregate.
But while most of us take pains to dodge the eight-legged pests, Chuck Lubelczyk heads straight for them.
As a field biologist at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute’s Lyme and Vector-Borne Disease Laboratory, he studies the spread of diseases carried by ticks, as well as by mosquitoes. That means venturing out into the fields, forests and coastlines of Maine to collect the bugs and evaluate where they pose the most risk to humans.
On a recent June day, Lubelczyk trudged into the greenery of the Wells Reserve, a 2,250-acre spread in York County headquartered at a restored saltwater farm. He partnered with researchers from the Biodiversity Research Institute in Portland to collect ticks from creatures less often associated with them: birds.
The team, assisted by several interns, set up wide nets to ensnare the birds as they flew through the area. They then delicately extricated them, tucked the birds into breathable collection bags, and toted them to a shady picnic table for easier handling. Using tweezers, the team plucked off each tick — typically feasting around the birds’ eyes, bills, and throats — and preserved the bugs for later testing at the lab.
Lubelczyk held up a vial containing at least 50 tiny nymphal deer ticks swirling in a preservative solution. They’d been tweezed off a single bird, a towhee, that morning.
Once free of ticks, the birds were then safely released to continue on their way.
https://bangordailynews.com/video/ticks-on-migratory-birds/ (Video here)
While mice, chipmunks and deer get most of the attention as hosts for ticks, “Not a lot of people talk about the bird issue,” he said. “They’re understudied in a big way, I think. They do have a real role to play.”
Ticks are an annoyance to birds, but they don’t transmit disease to them or slowly and lethally drain them of blood, as researchers have seen among moose calves in Maine. But birds facilitate the spread of ticks, picking them up in Maryland, Connecticut and other eastern states as they fly north in the spring, Lubelczyk explained.
“As they’re migrating, they’re either dropping the ticks off as they fly or when they land. They’re kind of seeding them along migration patterns.”
Emerging diseases
By tracking the birds and the ticks they carry, researchers hope to predict where Lyme and other tick-borne diseases are most likely to accelerate. Lyme is now present in every county in the state, after hitting a record of 1,488 cases in 2016, but ticks are just getting established in areas such as Aroostook and Washington counties, Lubelczyk said.
Along with Lyme, Lubelczyk tested the ticks for other two other emerging diseases, anaplasmosis and the rare but potentially devastating Powassan virus. Powassan, carried by both the deer tick and the groundhog or woodchuck tick, recently sickened two people in midcoast Maine, following the death in 2013 of a Rockland-area woman.
A recent survey Lubelczyk led found the virus in ticks crawling around southern Maine, Augusta and on Swan’s Island in Hancock County.
In the modest Scarborough lab, medical entomologist Rebecca Robich furthered the findings of that survey. Clad in a white coat and blue gloves, she cloned a tiny band of the Powassan virus’ inactivated RNA, using a sample derived from the ticks that tested positive in the survey. Robich began the work, designed to confirm the earlier test results, last winter.
She expects to know conclusively within the next month what percentage of the sampled ticks were infected with Powassan, she said.
“We’re this close to finishing,” Robich said.
Growing exposure
Ticks have become so prevalent in Maine that Lubelcyzk and his colleagues are increasingly called upon to educate the public about the health risks the arachnids pose. That includes speaking at community forums, town meetings, garden clubs and even to groups of employees.
“They’re widespread enough now that DOT, CMP, people like that are bumping into them on a regular basis,” he said. “Even people like law enforcement. The warden service, regular police with police dogs, they’re exposed.”
Their outreach also includes plenty of phone calls to the lab, fielded by its small staff of four, not counting summer interns.
“If somebody calls, we never really turn them down,” he said.
Many people don’t realize that the lab no longer identifies ticks for the public, Lubelczyk said. Now located in Scarborough along with MMC’s medical and psychiatric research centers, the lab formerly operated in South Portland, where it identified a tick’s species for anyone who walked in the door or mailed a sample. The University of Maine Cooperative Extension in Orono has since taken over that service (it does not test ticks for disease).
“It’s very hard to say no to someone when they’re really frantic because they found a tick on themselves, or their child, or even their pet,” he said. “And they’re sitting out in the parking lot.”
So far this season, the lab has fielded numerous calls from worried residents only to discover after viewing a photograph that the tick in question is a dog tick, not a deer tick. Maine is home to 15 species of ticks, and the dog tick is not among those that transmit disease to humans, at least in this region.
Through its outreach work, the lab has also found itself at the center of debates about how to manage ticks. Lubelczyk recalled a town forum on Long Island a couple of years ago that grew tense as residents discussed the use of pesticides.
“As soon as the topic of any kind of spray was brought up, not even by us, by somebody else, the fishing community was dead set against it,” he said. “Understandably, they’re worried about the stock. It really makes that difficult because you start to have divisions in how to control the ticks.”
The lab’s research on the role of birds in spreading tick-borne disease is similarly delicate, because many birds are under threat ecologically, Lubelczyk said.
“No one really cares if you try to target mice. Birds are federally protected in a lot of cases,” he said.
That other biting pest
Educating the public represents a large part of the lab’s mission but only a small part of its budget. Its outreach work is funded largely through small grants from foundations, Lubelczyk said.
Most of its research funding is targeted toward mosquitoes rather than ticks, boosted by the federal government’s initiative to combat the Zika virus, he said. While Zika hasn’t appeared in Maine, warming temperatures due to future climate change could make the state habitable for one of the mosquito species that carries it.
Lubelczyk explained this as he stood in the lab’s testing area, next to a large freezer storing petri dishes packed with frozen mosquitoes. A piece of yellow tape affixed to the door warned, “Not for food.”
While Lyme is far more prevalent, diseases carried by mosquitoes, such as West Nile virus and Eastern Equine Encephalitis, can lead to more acute illness. Both can cause inflammation of the brain and other serious complications.
Funding for tick research is generally less reliable, Lubelczyk said. The recent Powassan survey, for example, was funded by the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund, which collects money through the sale of instant scratch lottery tickets.
A continuing threat
The lab’s role in helping to prevent tick-borne diseases has only grown as the tick population and the diseases they carry spread. The incidence of Lyme in Maine is among the highest rates in the country, averaging 82.5 cases per 100,000 people between 2013 and 2015.
Anaplasmosis and babesiosis are less common but becoming increasingly worrisome.
Lubelczyk understands the illnesses on both a professional and personal level. He contracted Lyme several years ago, after a deer tick latched onto him while he made a pitstop on the way home from work one steamy July day, he said. He had just changed into shorts and sandals and jumped out of his car for 30 seconds to hang a mosquito trap in Wells, he recalled.
A day and a half later, he spotted the tick bite. After a round of antibiotics, he recovered, Lubelczyk said.
His usual garb for field work includes long sleeves and pants treated with permethrin, along with gaiters over his boots.
“It’s embarrassing,” he said, wincing. “We always talk about wearing appropriate clothing.”
_____________________
**Comment**
I’m thankful someone is dealing with the bird issue in relation to tick propagation as I believe it will be found to be much more of an issue than previously thought. It would help explain why folks insist they’ve been infected while near trees as birds would drop them onto trees (as well as various rodents). Like deer, birds serve primarily as transits that can spread ticks far and wide.
While Lubelczyk doesn’t feel dog ticks are important carriers (at least in his area) – he’s mistaken. Every tick should be suspect until proven otherwise. Think about it: they all exchange bodily fluids with their hosts. Dog ticks are known to carry Tularemia, https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/diseases/index.html Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Ehrlichia, Mediterranean Spotted Fever, Babesia in dogs (which should also make it suspect for humans), and potentially Bartonella. http://labs.russell.wisc.edu/wisconsin-ticks/rhipicephalus-sangineus/ No, it would not be wise to think of the Dog Tick in friendly terms. Remember that ticks are moving all over the place defying commonly held beliefs about geography. And while folks fighting for research grants want to promote and blame the supposed “global warming” mentioned in this article, there are many who disagree for good reasons: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/08/global-warming-numbers-fudged/
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/08/14/canadian-tick-expert-climate-change-is-not-behind-lyme-disease/ John explains, “The climate change range expansion model is what the authorities have been using to rationalize how they have done nothing for more than thirty years. It’s a huge cover-up scheme that goes back to the 1980’s. The grandiose scheme was a nefarious plot to let doctors off the hook from having to deal with this debilitating disease. I caught onto it very quickly. Most people have been victims of it ever since.”
“This climate change ‘theory’ is all part of a well-planned scheme. Even the ticks are smarter than the people who’ve concocted this thing,” he says.
“Climate change has nothing to do with tick movement. Blacklegged ticks are ecoadaptive, and tolerate wide temperature fluctuations. On hot summer days, these ticks descend into the cool, moist leaf litter and rehydrate. In winter, they descend into the leaf litter, and are comfortable under an insulating blanket of snow. Ticks have antifreeze-like compounds in their bodies, and can tolerate a wide range of temperatures. For instance, at Kenora, Ontario, the air temperature peaks at 36°C and dips to –44°C, and blacklegged ticks survive successfully.
Also, please note that although there has only been one Zika death in an elderly man with a preexisting health condition in the continental U.S., all the funding is going to it and mosquito research. This is causing untold harm here where Lyme is causing around 400,000 new cases per year. There is no official tally on all the other coinfections that often come with Lyme as they aren’t even reportable in many states but are a crucial detail in understanding the complexity of Lyme/MSIDS. People are often infected with numerous pathogens. https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/01/one-tick-bite-could-put-you-at-risk-for-at-least-6-different-diseases/
To treat this complex as a one organism/one disease would be folly.
Also, he claims that West Nile virus and Eastern Equine Encephalitis, can lead to more acute illness, I would disagree again. Lyme (borrelia), Babesia, Bartonella, Mycoplasma, and numerous other viruses, and funguses have killed people outright. Heart block, encephalitis, meningitis, and other serious illnesses are caused by TBI’s. Powassan can be transmitted in under 15 minutes and can kill. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is another killer. There is much to show that if the non-cell wall and biofilm formation of borrelia isn’t successfully dealt with, it could lead to dementia or Alzheimer’s in the future: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/06/10/the-coming-pandemic-of-lyme-dementia/, https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/06/03/borrelia-hiding-in-worms-causing-chronic-brain-diseases/, https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/08/09/dr-paul-duray-research-fellowship-foundation-some-great-research-being-done-on-lyme-disease/, https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/06/09/alzheimers-byproduct-of-infection/, https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/01/18/a-bug-for-alzheimers/
And of course, while many cases of Lyme (borrelia) don’t kill immediately, it can make you want to die and disrupt life in such a way people commit suicide. https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/06/20/suicide-lyme-and-associated-diseases/, https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/26/can-lyme-steal-your-mind/
If that isn’t serious, I don’t know what is. We need to completely kill the idea that Lyme/MSIDS isn’t a severe disease(s).
https://news.yale.edu/2017/08/04/how-tick-gut-gene-serves-gateway-lyme-disease
The bacterium that causes Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi, may have some help from a gene found in the guts of infected ticks, according to a new study led by Yale researchers and published in Nature Communications.
The research team identified a number of tick gut genes that demonstrated enhanced expression when infected by B. burgdorferi. One of those genes secretes a protein known as PIXR. When the researchers blocked the gene’s function in ticks, colonization of the tick gut by the Lyme bacterium — a key step in sustaining infection prevalence in ticks — was limited. In the guts of ticks lacking PIXR, the researchers also observed changes in gut microbes, gut metabolites, and gut immune responses. The changes included an increase in bacterial biofilm, or microorganisms that potentially form a sticky barrier to infection.
The findings suggest that the guts of ticks actively manage the microbes in their environment, turning that environment into a “barricade” or “gateway” to infection depending on the bacteria that dominate.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00208-0
For more on ticks: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/08/14/canadian-tick-expert-climate-change-is-not-behind-lyme-disease/
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/30/ticks-found-on-eyeball-buttocks-and-penis/
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/30/tick-inside-eye/
https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/12/start-treatment-if-tbis-are-suspected/
**Comment**
Perhaps the quickest way to negatively impact the tick population is to feed them an exclusively American diet.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scotts-ticks-heros-journey-lori-dennis-ma-rp by Lori Dennis July 30, 2017
I was just about to publish Lyme Madness last fall, and Dr. Kenneth Liegner, LLMD, suggested that if I was going to include a chapter on Lyme in Canada, then I should definitely speak with John Scott. “John, after all, is the foremost Canadian expert on ticks. He’s among the most learned on this subject,” Dr. Liegner insisted. I was wrapping up the final edits of my manuscript, so including an interview with John at this juncture was simply not an option.
Last week, however, I had the distinct pleasure of chatting with John and his wife, Kit, by phone. They were informative, interesting, expert, driven. Just like the rest of us, they are clearly in the thick of the madness that is chronic Lyme – and they have been at it, side-by-side, for more than thirty years.
The Scotts, married in 1973, have two grown children and three grandchildren all of whom live nearby. Both John and Kit have personally been battling Lyme and co-infections since 1986. Their family remains healthy––a great blessing for them.
In 1990, four years after falling ill, four years after being bounced from doctor to doctor, from misdiagnosis to misdiagnosis, as John’s health was becoming increasingly compromised by severe arthritic, neurological and encephalitic symptoms, he was at last properly diagnosed with Lyme and co-infections by the late Dr. Philip T. Williams in Ajax, Ontario. Kit’s diagnosis followed soon after.
Just like the rest of us in Lymeland, the Scotts were plunged into the Lyme rabbit hole. Just like the rest of us, they experienced plenty of denial from family, friends, doctors, and the world at large. The denial was even more entrenched back then, John recalls. “Back then, we were told that the only way we could have contracted Lyme disease was if we had gone to Long Point which was just not the case.”
It was their four-year search for medical answers, the constant push back, misinformation and disinformation they received from doctors and the feds, along with John’s professional background as a science researcher that drove them both to get to work. In 1991, John dusted off his dissecting microscope and began studying ticks across Canada, starting with the blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis. Flash forward to today, and John is one of the world’s foremost experts in tick research. He has been responsible for identifying 37 tick species and publishing 35 peer reviewed scientific articles on the subject.
Recently, John was awarded a Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers in recognition of 27 years of research and advocacy on Lyme disease and tick populations in Canada. In fact, he has recently conducted a cross-Canada study of ticks on avian and mammalian hosts which he plans to publish in the next six months.
For decades now, John has volunteered 30,000+ hours of his time as a ‘citizen scientist’, as co-founder with Kit and President of the Lyme-Borreliosis Support Group of Ontario (which later became Lyme Disease Association of Ontario, now known as Lyme Ontario ––www.lymeontario.com), writing and publishing a quarterly newsletter called Lyme Alert, organizing and chairing meetings, creating educational material and chairing several large symposiums.
Not only that! Together, the Scotts have educated and supported thousands of patients and their families, and have made Lyme disease a household word in this country. Most notably, John’s evidence-based, peer-reviewed tick-host research proves that anyone can contract Lyme disease anywhere in Canada.
Doctors, politicians, media — take note.
John continues to write letters to journalists and editors setting them straight on the real facts about Lyme disease. After posting one of his well-crafted letters on Facebook this week (see Attachment 1 below), I sent John a few comments from some of his fervent fans:
“He NAILED it!! Can we clone him? “
“BAM! Now, that’s how you pen a response!”
“That was brilliant to read!
“John Scott: One of my heroes.”
John replied, “I will try not to go into a spasm of self-aggrandizement. For me, the pen is mightier than the sword. I don’t know who said it, but it is true. Now, I have our peer-reviewed scientific research to lean on. I expect that our new paper will be published in 10 days.”
While Kit recently resigned from the board of Lyme Ontario after decades of service in order to make room for other things in her life, John will not stop, she tells me. He continues on his mission, thirty-one years later –- a mission to prove to the world that his nemeses, including Lyme deniers, most mainstream doctors, federal politicians, and institutional researchers are wrong about so many things. Already, he has disproven ten myths generated by tick researchers.
“I’m an independent researcher,” he tells me. “I can go in any direction I want and, therefore, I haven’t got flawed science. I can move in any direction and not be blocked. That’s the way it should be. If I were tied in with an institution, my work would be influenced and manipulated.“
For many years now, John has been especially focused on how wrong he believes the authorities are about ticks and climate change. ‘It’s not that John does not believe in climate change,” Kit is quick to point out. “It’s just that he knows that climate change is not the reason for the proliferation of ticks and Lyme disease.”
John explains, “The climate change range expansion model is what the authorities have been using to rationalize how they have done nothing for more than thirty years. It’s a huge cover-up scheme that goes back to the 1980’s. The grandiose scheme was a nefarious plot to let doctors off the hook from having to deal with this debilitating disease. I caught onto it very quickly. Most people have been victims of it ever since.”
“This climate change ‘theory’ is all part of a well-planned scheme. Even the ticks are smarter than the people who’ve concocted this thing,” he says.
“Climate change has nothing to do with tick movement. Blacklegged ticks are ecoadaptive, and tolerate wide temperature fluctuations. On hot summer days, these ticks descend into the cool, moist leaf litter and rehydrate. In winter, they descend into the leaf litter, and are comfortable under an insulating blanket of snow. Ticks have antifreeze-like compounds in their bodies, and can tolerate a wide range of temperatures. For instance, at Kenora, Ontario, the air temperature peaks at 36°C and dips to –44°C, and blacklegged ticks survive successfully.
“Ticks are marvellous eco-adaptors. They will be the last species on the planet. Do you see how silly this theory of climate change is as a way to rationalize what’s happening. It’s all a red herring to divert your attention,” he explains.
Divert our attention from what? I ask.
“From what is not happening medically. In simple terms, the feds have diverted our attention by saying ‘let’s worry about ticks and climate change, put all our funding there and we will solve the problem of Lyme disease’.”
Those of us in Lymeland are painfully aware that the problem will not be solved by putting all of the focus on climate change and tick surveillance. The federal government’s single-mindedness is evidenced by the recent announcement of the first-ever Federal Framework and its tick research funding.
“The authorities have been using tick expansion and climate change to get research dollars. Climate change is a popular topic right now, and that is a great source of funding for related research. However, any research on ticks and climate change is inconclusive––in essence, there is no validity. The long-range, futuristic projections and statistical models are bogus science because blacklegged ticks have already been found in northern Canada. In fact, we documented blacklegged ticks on migratory songbirds in northern Alberta dating back to 1998. Any allocation of government funding for ticks and climate change research is a complete waste of taxpayers’ money. It will not help Lyme disease patients one iota.”
“One thing is certain,” John says. “The medical profession is woefully ignorant about Lyme disease. When it’s mentioned, they withdraw, they are mute and they quickly move on to another topic.”
“Back in 1992, when I spoke with Dr. Harvey Artsob, Head, National Microbiology Laboratory, he said, ‘I don’t know what we are going to do if the ticks [Ixodes scapularis] cross the border.’ I replied, ‘Harvey, the ticks are already here.’ He paled,” John says.
“Obviously, at the time, Dr. Artsob was told by the medical profession to get rid of this problem, so they didn’t have to deal with it. The fear of having blacklegged ticks and Lyme disease in Canada and, having to deal with it, was enormous. The goal was to have the federal and provincial governments squash the problem––to hell with the patients. They concocted all kinds of schemes to dismiss and discount the problem, and these defamatory tactics have cascaded forward from then to now,” John tells me.
And what about this ‘fast track’ Lyme vaccine that’s coming down the pike? I ask him.
“Vaccines don’t work because this stealth organism will go through the immune system. You can’t stop it. It goes into the T-cells, the B-cells, scar tissue, eyes, brain, bone, tendons, ligaments, and nerve cells. You can put all the vaccine into a person you want but you can’t stop it.”
“It’s the doctors and their investments against the rest of the world,” he says.
“OHIP-funded doctors are useless when it comes to ticks and tick-borne diseases. Ticks are exploding; the medical system is imploding. OHIP doctors get paid regardless of what they say or do. There is no therapeutic alliance between doctors and patients. No trust.”
He took the words right out of my mouth. This, my friends, is the madness that we cannot ignore.
Kit and John continue to suffer from this disease. Apart from other protocols, for the past five years they have been using rife and they have found it to be very effective on certain tick-transmitted pathogens.
“It is far from the “magic bullet”, says Kit, “but we did antibiotics for 20 years, on and off, and just could not tolerate them anymore. We also found that the antibiotics became less and less effective the more we used them. We had to do something, so we investigated rife treatment. We have reduced our pain dramatically and other symptoms too, but the herxes can be quite severe so we don’t treat for very long at any one time, and only every 14 days. We do IV Vitamin C treatments once a month to get rid of the neurotoxins. I have attached our Information Sheet on our 3D Coil rife machine. If you know anyone who is interested, we’d be happy to be in touch via e-mail.”
Kit ends the call by saying, “Thanks again for Lyme Madness. You’ve done the Lyme community a great service.”
John says, “I believe you saved Matt’s life. We can certainly appreciate what you’ve gone through. Please keep up the great work! We need you!”
For these kindnesses, I am grateful. And with all that I now know about John and Kit Scott and their invaluable contribution to this Lyme community, it is clear that we have two of the greatest Canadian Lyme heroes in our midst.
—————————————————————————————————–
Lori Dennis, MA, RP is a Registered Psychotherapist and the author of LYME MADNESS, named #1 NEW RELEASE in Immune System Health on Amazon. LYME MADNESS is available on Amazon. For more information on Lyme Madness, go to loridennisonline.com.
For more on the “Climate Change” narrative:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/zph.12369/abstract
Authors: E.H. Jones, A.F. Hinckley, S.A. Hook, J.I Meek, B. Backenson, K.J. Kugeler, K.A. Feldman
Zoonoses and Public Health 19 June 2017
We examined whether pet ownership increased the risk for tick encounters and tickborne disease among residents of three Lyme disease-endemic states as a nested cohort within a randomized controlled trial. Information about pet ownership, use of tick control for pets, property characteristics, tick encounters and human tickborne disease were captured through surveys, and associations were assessed using univariate and multivariable analyses.
Pet-owning households had 1.83 times the risk (95% CI = 1.53, 2.20) of finding ticks crawling on and 1.49 times the risk (95% CI = 1.20, 1.84) of finding ticks attached to household members compared to households without pets.
This large evaluation of pet ownership, human tick encounters and tickborne diseases shows that pet owners, whether of cats or dogs, are at increased risk of encountering ticks and suggests that pet owners are at an increased risk of developing tickborne disease. Pet owners should be made aware of this risk and be reminded to conduct daily tick checks of all household members, including the pets, and to consult their veterinarian regarding effective tick control products.
For Dr. Cameron’s take on the study: http://danielcameronmd.com/risk-tick-bite-pet-owners/
