Archive for the ‘Ticks’ Category

News Report: Tiny Terror – The Truth About Ticks

https://www.localsyr.com/living-with-lyme/living-with-lyme-tiny-terror/  News Video Here (Approx. 24 Min)

Tiny Terror: The Truth About Ticks

by: ,

Updated:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) Ticks are in our yards and they’re saturating Central New York. One bite can change everything. Most people do not know Central New York is an epicenter for tick-borne disease. Most recent data indicates a 439% increase in Central New York between 2008 and 2018.

What are some of the symptoms of Lyme disease?

  • Brain fog
  • Headaches
  • Joint Pain
  • Extreme Fatigue
Doctors and scientists struggle to agree on how to get this under control.

(See link for video and story)

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SUMMARY:

  • The reason Lyme/MSIDS patients are not treated appropriately is due to the faulty, unscientific, and fraudulent CDC Lyme guidelines which serve as an Iron Curtain in the medical community.
  • It is imperative to get to a Lyme literate (LLMD) doctor trained by ILADS, a group of medical professionals who recognize the faulty, unreliable testing and ineffective CDC guidelines.
  • The quote from a doctor in the news story that taking a single or double dose of doxycycline reducing the risk of transmission has been completely and utterly debunked.
    • Based on animal studies, ILADS recommends that known blacklegged tick bites be treated with 20 days of doxycycline (barring any contraindications).
    • Given the low success rates in trials treating EM rashes for 20 or fewer days, ILADS recommends that patients receive 4-6 weeks of doxycycline, amoxicillin or cefuroxime. A minimum of 21 days of azithromycin is also acceptable, especially in Europe. All patients should be reassessed at the end of their initial therapy and, when necessary, antibiotic therapy should be extended.
    • ILADS recommends that patients with persistent symptoms and signs of Lyme disease be evaluated for other potential causes before instituting additional antibiotic therapy.
    • ILADS recommends antibiotic retreatment when a chronic Lyme infection is judged to be a possible cause of the ongoing manifestations and the patient has an impaired quality of life.
  • Lyme survivor Brenna Osmun, who lost her ability to walk, is interviewed on the report.  Two months of IV antibiotics saved her life. She suffered years of relapses until she saw a LLMD, a specialist rarely covered by insurance.  She also had Babesia and Bartonella and was treated with more than a dozen herbs and antibiotics.  She says this to patients:

“It gets better. It really, really does. And my life changed for the better I wanna say. Even though I was really sick, it does get better. And having that support really helps you. Don’t give up. Please don’t give up. I didn’t and I’m still alive.” ~ Brenna Osmu

  • Executive Director of the Central New York Lyme and Tick-Borne Disease Alliance, Royale Scuderi became infected years ago when doctors treating this were scarce.  She had to drive to Long Island for year to get appropriately treated.
  • Journalist and host of the news program, Nicole Sommavilla became septic with her organs shutting down.  Years later she was diagnosed with Lyme disease and required a dozen drugs to treat Lyme, Babesia, and Anaplasmosis

“I went from years of oral medications and injections to just one medication I’m on now and just a lot of maintenance with diet and knowing when not to push myself past my limit, it’s a lot of self-awareness.” ~ Nicole Sommavilla

A MESSAGE FROM NICOLE:

If you’re fighting Lyme right now, please don’t give up.

Don’t quit in the darkness. Most days it may feel easier to give in, but hang on. Lean into your support system and keep fighting. Because joy and healing are coming. ~ Nicola Sommavilla

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Category:

Activism, Lyme, Ticks, Treatment

Sacramento Mom Shares Struggle with Lyme Disease

https://www.kcra.com/article/sacramento-mom-shares-struggle-with-lyme-disease/40186366

‘No one could figure out what was wrong’: Sacramento mom shares struggle with Lyme disease

Lyme Fight Foundation educates people suffering from Lyme disease
Brian Hickey

SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

A Sacramento mom is sharing her struggle with Lyme disease in hopes of helping others who may be undiagnosed and suffering from the chronic symptoms of the disease.

Melissa Moya has formed the Lyme Fight Foundation, dedicated to educating people who have Lyme disease and to help protect those who don’t.

(See link for article, transcript and News Video)

For more:

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Ticks

The History of Lyme Disease Has a Wisconsin Chapter. It’s Still Being Written

https://wisconsinwatch.org/2022/03/the-history-of-lyme-disease-has-a-wisconsin-chapter-its-still-being-written

The history of Lyme disease has a Wisconsin chapter. It’s still being written.

From the first case documented by a Milwaukee dermatologist to ongoing research at the University of Wisconsin, the state has played a big role in Lyme disease.
by Zhen Wang / Wisconsin Watch
Xia Lee, a postdoctoral vector biologist in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Entomology, shows an adult black-legged tick, in the Susan Paskewitz Lab in Madison, Wis., on Sept. 21, 2021. Lyme disease in Wisconsin has grown as the black-legged ticks that cause the disease have spread across the state. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)
Reading Time: 3 minutes Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit newsroom that focuses on government integrity and quality of life issues. Sign up for our newsletter for more stories straight to your inbox.In 1970, a Wisconsin dermatologist first documented what would soon be called Lyme disease across the country.

Dr. Rudolph J. Scrimenti, a dermatologist in Milwaukee, reported the first case in the United States of the signature rash of early Lyme disease.

The patient had removed a tick from his skin three months earlier in north-central Wisconsin. Scrimenti treated the patient with penicillin based on medical literature he had read out of Europe.

“The patient became symptom-free within 48 hours,” he wrote in the journal article in 1970. “There has been no recurrence of symptoms for the past year.” However, Scrimenti said the cause of the disease was “uncertain.”

Scrimenti, who died in 2013, later began treating patients in Milwaukee and served on the review board of a journal on tick-borne diseases in the early 1990s.

Over the past three decades, Susan Paskewitz, a medical entomologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, has documented the growing prevalence of ticks in Wisconsin.

Paskewitz found that deer ticks, also called black-legged ticks, have moved steadily from northwest to southwest, and then into the central and eventually slowly into the eastern and southern Wisconsin.

“They invaded our state entirely,” Paskewitz said in a 2021 Wednesday Nite @ The Lab episode. She said the regeneration of forests decimated by logging in the early 1900s and rebounding of the deer population are the main drivers in Wisconsin. Paskewitz said warming temperatures caused by climate change are expected to lengthen the tick season and accelerate their northward march into Canada.

Confirmed cases of Lyme disease per 100,000 Wisconsin residents, 2020. (Wisconsin Department of Health Services)

Xia Lee, a tick biologist in Paskewitz’s lab, has studied the insects for more than a decade. Lee is soft-spoken, but when he talks about the parasites, he marvels at their “beauty.”

Lee explained that the Lyme-bearing ticks live between two and three years. They acquire blood meals from animal hosts at each stage of life — larva, nymph and adult.

“These guys are always born uninfected, and they have to pick up the infections when they feed on their first animal (hosts),” Lee said, pointing to the lab-raised larvae.

He said that larvae pick up pathogens during their first blood meal from infected small mammals, such as the white-footed mouse. They subsequently transmit those pathogens during their second meal as nymphs and their third meal as adults.

A Yale study has found that about 20% to 30% of the black-legged tick nymphs carry the bacterium that causes Lyme disease in southern New England, while the rate of infected adult ticks is 30% to 50%. The tick can also be infected with other microbes at the same time, carrying and transmitting other pathogens and making people sick with Lyme and other tick-borne diseases such as anaplasmosis and babesiosis.

Xia Lee, a postdoctoral vector biologist in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Entomology, is seen in the Susan Paskewitz Lab in Madison, Wis., on Sept. 21, 2021.  Lee hopes to develop a Lyme disease vaccine for mice, which spread the disease to ticks that feed on them and later infect humans.  (Coburn Dukehart/Wisconsin Watch)

Once an infected tick latches on a human, it falls off when full. If a tick is removed within 24 hours, the likelihood of transmission is very low, Lee said. However, when a poppy seed-sized nymphal tick firmly attaches itself to the skin, detecting and removing it is difficult, increasing the risk of infection.

Lee noted that Wisconsin never got the proper recognition as the site of the first case of the disease. That honor went to the town of Lyme in Connecticut, which remains one of the states with the highest incidence rates in the country.

“We like to joke about it and say that Wisconsin was actually the first state where Lyme disease was detected,” he said, “but we never got the glory for naming (it).”

The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates. 

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Category:

Activism, Lyme, research, Ticks

Interview About Lyme Disease on TNT Radio

I was recently interviewed on May 31, 2022 by Michael Parker on Deprogram, a TNT Radio news talk show. The topic was Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.

It was about a 40 minute interview and only covered the basics of testing, the polarization in the medical community, and the plight of patients.

Interview here (Scroll to 4:45 to bypass other news):

For more:

Category:

Activism, Babesia, Bartonella, Lyme, Testing, Ticks, Treatment

Tick Bites & Coinfections

https://www.globallymealliance.org/blog/dear-lyme-warrior-help-tick-bites-and-co-infections

Dear Lyme Warrior…Help! Tick Bites and Co-Infections

by Jennifer Crystal on May 27, 2022

<span id="hs_cos_wrapper_name" class="hs_cos_wrapper hs_cos_wrapper_meta_field hs_cos_wrapper_type_text" style="" data-hs-cos-general-type="meta_field" data-hs-cos-type="text" >Dear Lyme Warrior…Help! Tick Bites and Co-Infections</span>
Every few months, Jennifer Crystal devotes a column to answering your questions. Do you have a question for Jennifer? If so, email her at lymewarriorjennifercrystal@gmail.com.
Now that tick season is upon us, friends ask me what to do when they find an embedded tick. What should I tell them?

While this question seems like it should have a simple answer, people probably get conflicting information from the internet and even from physicians about what they should do if they find a tick. This is because there is debate about how long a tick needs to be attached to a human or pet in order to transmit the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. The old standard of 36-48 hours doesn’t necessarily apply anymore, now that we know that ticks can transmit bacteria faster if they were already partially fed before biting you, and that some tick-borne diseases can be transmitted much faster than Lyme disease—Powassan virus in as little as 15 minutes.

There are two general rules of thumb that I always tell people: the first is that the longer a tick is attached, the greater chance it has of transmitting pathogens. And unless you see the tick bite you, you can’t really know how long it’s been attached. If you notice it after a long day of hiking, you don’t know if it bit you early in the morning, or just as you were leaving. What if you don’t notice it until the next day, after you’ve done some gardening and walked through the grass? If a tick is engorged, you know it has been feeding, but it can be hard to pinpoint exactly where and when it became attached to you, which makes the certain-number-of-hours recommendation moot.

This leads to my second rule of thumb: with Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, it is always better to be safe than sorry. I tell people that if they find a tick, they should call their doctor and get right on antibiotics. Even if those antibiotics end up being prophylactic, it is safer than the alternative—finding out weeks, months or years later that they’re sick with Lyme and possibly with co-infections, too—and then needing far more extensive treatment than the initial antibiotic course. Waiting for test results (often faulty, especially early in infection), waiting for a rash (which doesn’t appear in up to 30% of people with Lyme), or waiting for other symptoms (different for everyone), is a dangerous approach to Lyme disease. (For more information, see my blog post “The Danger of ‘Waiting and Seeing’ with Lyme Disease”).

The next question is, how long a course of prophylactic antibiotics should you take? The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) recommendation of a single dose of prophylactic doxycycline is based on one study that showed good efficacy in preventing Lyme rash, but as we’ve established, not everyone with Lyme disease gets a rash. The International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) recommends a 10-20 day course of antibiotics. For me personally, I’d rather have the coverage of a full treatment course that is used for actual Lyme infection, rather than take my chances that a single dose will keep me safe. Each person needs to make their own decision with their doctor, but it’s important that decision be an informed one!

Do other tick-borne diseases have the same treatment as Lyme disease?

This is a great follow-up question to the first, because some people might think, “Well, if I’m taking antibiotics for Lyme disease, then I’ve got other tick-borne diseases covered.” That’s true for some co-infections, but not for all, so this, too, is dangerous thinking. Some co-infections like anaplasmosis and ehrlichiosis are treated with the same antibiotic as Lyme disease, but the length of treatment might be different. Other tick-borne diseases like babesiosis, which is a parasite that infects the red blood cells, require completely different treatment. And still another co-infection, bartonellosis, needs more urgent research for better treatments (learn more about GLA’s Bartonella Discovery Program here). I always tell people, “If you’re being treated for Lyme disease and don’t know you have babesiosis, you’re only fighting half the battle.” If you find a tick attached to you, it’s imperative that you talk to your doctor about other tick-borne diseases, not just Lyme, and know the signs of them (see “Common Tick-Borne Diseases”).

***

The Bartonella Discovery Program:

GLA is currently fundraising for The Bartonella Discovery Program, a research project bringing together some of the top researchers world-wide who are experts on Bartonellosis. These researchers will learn more about the bacteria and which treatments are most likely to cure patients like Beth, who are suffering from Bartonellosis.

None of the work GLA has accomplished would be possible without your support. To learn more and fund this project, click on top link.

Writer

Jennifer Crystal

Opinions expressed by contributors are their own. Jennifer Crystal is a writer and educator in Boston. Her work has appeared in local and national publications including Harvard Health Publishing and The Boston Globe. As a GLA columnist for over six years, her work on GLA.org has received mention in publications such as The New Yorker, weatherchannel.com, CQ Researcher, and ProHealth.com. Jennifer is a patient advocate who has dealt with chronic illness, including Lyme and other tick-borne infections. Her memoir about her medical journey is forthcoming. Contact her via email below.

Email: lymewarriorjennifercrystal@gmail.com

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**COMMENT**

Before you take the 10-20 days of doxy too literally, please read this excerpt from the ILADS website:

Treatment Guidelines

  • The optimal treatment regimen for the management of known tick bites, EM rashes and persistent disease has not yet been determined. Accordingly, it is too early to standardize restrictive protocols. However, ILADS does make recommendations for each of these clinical situations

    • ILADS recommends against the use of a single 200 mg dose of doxycycline for the prevention of Lyme disease. Not only is it unlikely to be highly efficacious, in the human trial failed therapy led to a seronegative disease state.

    • Based on animal studies, ILADS recommends that known blacklegged tick bites be treated with 20 days of doxycycline (barring any contraindications).

    • Given the low success rates in trials treating EM rashes for 20 or fewer days, ILADS recommends that patients receive 4-6 weeks of doxycycline, amoxicillin or cefuroxime. A minimum of 21 days of azithromycin is also acceptable, especially in Europe. All patients should be reassessed at the end of their initial therapy and, when necessary, antibiotic therapy should be extended.

    • ILADS recommends that patients with persistent symptoms and signs of Lyme disease be evaluated for other potential causes before instituting additional antibiotic therapy.

    • ILADS recommends antibiotic retreatment when a chronic Lyme infection is judged to be a possible cause of the ongoing manifestations and the patient has an impaired quality of life.

So, there’s a lot of clinical judgement needed here and nothing is straight forward.  Each patient is unique and needs to be treated accordingly.  And please remember, none of this covers coinfections, which often require completely different medications for differing lengths of time and are just as severe if not worse than Lyme disease.

For more on treatments:

Category:

Lyme, Testing, Ticks, Transmission, Treatment