Archive for the ‘Treatment’ Category

GOTCHA CALL TO ACTION Addressing the TBDWG

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/gotcha-call-action-addressing-new-tick-borne-disease-working-bauer/

*2019 assessment of the Tick-Born disease Working Group and CALL TO ACTION*
*2019 assessment of the Tick-Born disease Working Group and CALL TO ACTION*

GOTCHA CALL TO ACTION addressing the new Tick-Borne Disease Working Group (TBDWG) 2019

Kristina Bauer
Yoga Mom, Wellness practitioner and LymeEducator
After attending the first TBDWG of 2019 on June 4th in D.C., it was apparent there needs to be a louder voice from the Lyme patient community.

I was encouraged at the Tick-Borne Disease Working Group meeting to write all concerns to the following email address, tickbornedisease@hhs.gov.

I BELIEVE in democracy, and in one new member this year. I was very impressed particularly with Commander Rebecca Bunnell, who is on the federal side.

She is a Senior Advisor at CMS (Medicare and Medicaid). I spent some time talking with her and she is genuinely pushing for a PATIENT CENTERED TBDWG! I believe she has a very powerful impact potential for patients.

This is, I believe where we need to focus as patients and activists. Once Medicare and Medicaid approve covering a treatment and recommended tests etc., the private sector (insurance!) usually will pick up and follow, historically. That’s our goal is better tests, treatment, and insurance coverage.

Here is a sample letter you’re welcome to copy, paste and share in your groups. Add your name at the bottom, take mine off, and email it off to the TBDWG.

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE WHAT YOUR IMPACT CAN HAVE! THINK ACTUP! from the AIDS fight for medical justice. Lyme advocates are involved, strategic and TOGETHER WE CAN do this!

—————————————————-

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,

The Lyme and associated diseases community are pressing for a congressional hearing on the mishandling of Lyme disease of the leadership of NIAID, NIH, CDC and HHS.

We will continue our efforts from across the globe until our demands are met for quality diagnostics, guidelines for treatments that work, and insurance coverage for effective treatments.

We have organized information chronologically from when the CDC took over in the late 1980’s until current time. This revealed inadequate studies were at the source of ineffective guidelines to patient’s detriment and in contrast, to develop a vaccine.

We need funds for research on infection persistence, with special attention be given to drug studies that consider the following:

1.The unusually long replication cycle of the organism

2. Borrelia’s stationary growth pattern, which allows for the formation antibiotic tolerant persister cells, once the stationary phase is reached

3. The tropism of the organism

4. The varied abilities of medications to pass the blood-brain-barrier

5. The formation of biofilm colonies that prohibit medication accessibility

6. The ability of the organism to compromise the immune system, likely necessitating the complete eradication of the organism from the body

7. The non-cultivability of the organism, once it experiences, even a limited exposure to an antibiotic

Advocates around the world are outraged by the conflicts of interest allowed at the table so far, including and especially Dr. Shapiro. We now have almost 23,000 signatures on our change.org petition written by Dorothy Leland of Lymedisease.org requesting his removal from the TBDWG.

Lyme patients worldwide DEMAND he be removed immediately!

Electing him is no approach to a “fair and balanced” working group makeup. He has proven to be against patients’ needs year after year. Another assessment by Mrs. Leland is at this link https://www.lymedisease.org/shapiro-tbdwg/.

As a result of this groups history, public participation has been poor, and faith never established. Allowing IDSA to continue to keep their admission of Shapiro’s appointment on the Tick-Borne Disease Working Group two weeks prior to what the public saw violates your transparency goals outlined in your charter, among many other violations.

IDSA publicly made a shocking omission on their website that they disagree with the TBDWG recommendation to Congress for insurance coverage for Lyme patients. The TBDWG was formed for the patient group not IDSA, correct? This is blatant medical discrimination violating our dignity and human rights. Would they say this about a child with cancer?

We ask the following:

A congressional hearing on the mishandling of Lyme from 1980 to current.

IDSA trained Dr.’s should be denied a place at the table until they prove to incorporate a patient focus to reinforcing the medical human rights of Lyme patients. The WHO’s constitution states that every person has the RIGHT to their best attainable health.

It’s the obligation of the TBDWG to make that happen.

Every member on the TBDWG who has conflicts of interests need to step down, so the direction is squarely centered on the patients without a payday for players. All conflicts of interest of the TBDWG need to be fully disclosed and transparent to Congress and on public record.

We ask for a public announcement for the termination of the use of the term PTLD/PTLDS. It has no scientific backing and negates the user’s credentials immediately to the reader.

Lyme constitutes 80% of all Tick-borne diseases the CDC estimates, therefore Lyme should make up 80% of the subcommittees.

All pregnancies need tested for Tick-borne diseases right away, and ILADS guidelines the standard treatment allowed.

States need to require Doctors to be educated in Lyme and Tick-borne diseases before graduating medical school. It is shameful that didn’t happen out of the first meeting. AMA approved CME’s (Continuing Medical Education credits) offered at ILADEF.org need to become required immediately by all medical personnel.

We ask you protect our Dr.’s. No physician adhering to a reasonable protocol backed by peer reviewed studies should be under scrutiny or harassment by any medical board.

Dr Walker at meeting #9 posed the question,

“what caused the increase in Tick-born disease?”

The answer is in bioengineering the fertility, and force-feeding of pathogens to ticks admitted by government employee, Doctor Willy Burgdorfer for NIH. Per his own account and made public (BITTEN, by Kris Newby), this was the big turn for an increase in the tick population.

The government is responsible for fixing this epidemic today, starting with patients already infected.

Please respond to this email addressing my concerns outlined above and commit this to public record.

Respectfully,

Kristina Bauer, Texas Lyme Alliance and GOTCHA, Global Oversight for Transparency against Corruption in Healthcare Alliance

_________________

**Comment**

While I agree with Ms. Bauer on most points, I am concerned that many of these action points could backfire against patients and doctors.  It’s a very delicate situation.

Doctor protection laws have inadvertently put practitioners under the spotlight and they are being singled out and scrutinized more after the so called ‘protection’ than before it. Politics are often counter intuitive.

I’m concerned about the comment that 80% of the subcommittees should be singularly focused on Lyme disease. Many of the coinfections are not reportable diseases and there is absolutely no record of prevalence. In my opinion, the entire Lyme paradigm needs to shift from a singular entity into a far more complex, systemic illness often accompanied with other pathogens either directly transmitted by ticks OR that are reactivated via tick bite, vaccinations, or other assaults on the immune system.

In short, few have ‘just Lyme’ anymore.
Part of the current problem is the continued myopic definition of the disease.

Either Lyme has evolved into this complex monster, or it was always present yet under-appreciated. According to many ILADS trained doctors with decades of experience, coinfections weren’t as prevalent years ago as they are now. They admit it it used to be much simpler to treat.

Now, cases are extremely individual and complex.

This is where we can cut our nose off despite our face with legislation that continues to pigeon-hole this beast into something it’s not.

The longer I observe, the more I’m convinced we need to fund our own work to get to the bottom of the chronic/persistent issue as well as recognize concurrent infections, create proper testing that takes both these issues into account, find all the transmission modes, and effective treatments. Notice treatments is plural. The only box this fits into is Pandora’s.

The answers for some of these issues are going to be extremely individualistic. We should quit putting this into a 2-minute sound-bite and mandating a “specific” treatment to all or we will end up no better than we started.

Somehow we need to continue to allow Lyme-literate doctors to treat this appropriately without infringing upon their rights, while encouraging other doctors to become trained. The problem I see is we will never fit into a Western medicine paradigm and a 10-15 minute appointment. This complex disease is far too sticky. So, even if insurance covered it and mainstream medicine treated it, the entire formula wouldn’t work unless it’s a simple acute case. My first appointment with a LLMD was 90 minutes long and I filled out medical chronology going back to infancy. Do you seriously think medical monopolies are equipped for that kind of detail and introspection?

 

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Treatment

Dementia From Illness

https://www.dementia.org/dementia-from-infection

Dementia From Illness

Milder, degenerative forms of dementia that are treatable and even reversible, include cases of dementia that develop from a brain infection or immune disorder.

The development of dementia is not limited to the elderly. There are a number of infections that affect the brain, as well as immune disorders that incite reactions in the body leading to complicated forms of cerebral damage.

These damages can have a number of lingering effects, even after the initial infections have been eliminated, including the onset of dementia. Fortunately, this is one of the milder forms of dementia, and in most cases is almost fully reversible.

What Is Dementia From Illness?

Dementia can sometimes develop as a result of your body’s natural reaction to fighting off a traditional infection.

This could be any kind of brain-related infection, such as meningitis, encephalitis, cases of syphilis that have gone untreated, Lyme disease and other conditions that completely compromise an individual’s immune system, like Leukemia.

Some conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, which is incited by the body attacking its own nerve cells, can also be a primary cause of this kind of dementia.

Risk Factors

If you are at risk for developing, or already have any of the following conditions, you may have a greater chance of eventually developing dementia from infections:

  • Meningitis (all varieties)
  • Malaria
  • Brain Abscesses
  • Encephalitis
  • Lyme Disease
  • Syphilis
  • Any bacterial or viral infection that affects the brain

The risk increases with age, and is much more of a danger if any of the infections go untreated.

Signs And Symptoms

As with many other forms of dementia, dementia resulting from illness can cause memory loss as well as difficulty understanding, recalling or transmitting language; difficulty concentrating on simple tasks, inability to coordinate or perform previously easy tasks, changes of personality traits or strange and sometimes inappropriate behavior.

If you have recently had an infection or immune disorder that has affected the brain, and you are currently experiencing symptoms of dementia, there may be a strong correlation. Even if the infection has disappeared or been completely treated, the damage it could have caused to your central nervous system may still be present.

Treatments

Fortunately, forms of dementia that have originated from an illness or an infection are, for the most part, reversible. Unlike Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of degenerative dementia that are incapable of reversing, the nature of an illness-borne case of dementia allows for its effects to be eliminated.

The cerebral impact, due in large part to complications from the body’s response to the infection, can be restored to its original state.

Treat Illnesses Promptly To Protect Cognitive Function

If you currently have an infection that affects the brain or any kind of immune disorder that complicates the way your body reacts, you should be aware of the possibility of developing this kind of dementia.

The longer these infections go untreated, the higher the risk of development and the more severe the symptoms could be. Fortunately, even if you do develop dementia from your illness, in most cases of this kind of dementia, it is possible to fully restore cognitive function.

_______________________

**Comment**

Although this article was written in 2015 it’s a good reminder that dementia can be caused by infections.

The following article is a specific example of how dementia can actually be undiagnosed Lyme disease.

https://www.inquisitr.com/3234154/kris-kristofferson-diagnosed-dementia-was-actually-lyme-disease/

Kris Kristofferson: Diagnosed ‘Dementia’ Was Actually Lyme Disease

CELEBRITIES

Many people deal with at least some degree of memory loss as they age. So when singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who turned 80 on June 22, began having trouble remembering things, he and his doctors chalked it up to the relentless march of time along with the effects of head injuries he received as a youthful athlete.

In November 2013, The Daily Mail reported that the then-77-year old Kristofferson was able to remember his own songs but not much else, and that other areas of his life were being adversely affected by dementia.

“I wish my memory weren’t so bad. They tell me it’s from all the football and boxing and the concussions that I got. A couple of years ago my memory just started going. I can remember my songs so I can perform, but other than that…”

Around the time that Kristofferson was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2014, doctors told the man who wrote “Me and Bobby McGee” that his memory deficit was indicative of the onset of Alzheimer’s disease or could be a form of dementia known as pugilistica. Now we know that Kris Kristofferson has Lyme disease.

On June 6, Rolling Stone magazine revealed that recent test results prove Kristofferson’s so-called ‘dementia’ was in fact caused by Lyme disease. Kristofferson’s wife, Lisa, told Rolling Stone that her husband had been taking prescription drugs to treat Alzheimer’s and depression for a number of years but stopped once Lyme was correctly diagnosed. She said that Kris “suddenly came back” after three weeks of treatment for Lyme disease.

“There are still bad days, but some days he’s perfectly normal and it’s easy to forget that he is even battling anything.”

When Kris Kristofferson presented symptoms of memory loss in his late 70s, it was easy for physicians to believe that he was suffering some sort of dementia. For one thing, Kristofferson has homes in Hawaii and California, where deer ticks are uncommon. Secondly, Kris Kristofferson was a Golden Gloves boxer and also has a history of playing contact sports such as college football.

Lisa Kristofferson stated that she believes her husband was infected by a deer tick whilst filming the 2006 movie Disappearances on location in Vermont. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains that 96 percent of Lyme disease cases reported in 2014 originated from tick bites in Vermont and 13 other northeast and upper Midwest states. The CDC notes that although Lyme disease affects 30,000 people annually and is the fifth most common Nationally Notable disease, it does not occur nationwide.

In the United States, Lyme is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi and Borrelia mayonii bacteria that is transmitted to humans and other mammals by the bite of the black-legged deer tick. The tick is most commonly hosted by deer, although squirrels, raccoons and opossums may carry the disease vector, too.

Mayo Clinic describes the first sign of early onset Lyme as a bulls-eye shaped rash at the bite site. Called erythema migrans, the rash generally appears three to 30 days after an infected tick bite. The rash, which is neither painful nor itchy, may spread to other parts of the body. Additional early signs of Lyme disease include fever, chills, body aches, joint and muscle pain, swollen lymph nodes, and other flu-like symptoms. Mayo Clinic notes that not all persons infected with Lyme develop the rash, and that the disease can be difficult to diagnose.

Columbia University Medical Center states that a number of diagnostic tests may be used to determine whether or not a patient is infected with Lyme disease, and that it is not uncommon for an infected person to test negative even though they have the disease. When a patient does test positive for Lyme, early intervention with strong antibiotics may prevent the disease from becoming chronic and unmanageable.

Kristofferson looked back on his long musical career at his personal website.

“I always try to be as honest as I can in the songwriting, otherwise there’s no point in doing it. I might as well be doing an advertising job or something. And what I’m finding, to my pleasant surprise at this age, is that I’m more inclined to laughter than tears. I hope I’ll feel this creative and this grateful until they throw dirt over me.”

Of the future, Kris Kristofferson told Rolling Stone the following.

“I really have no anxiety about controlling my own life. Somehow I just slipped into it and it’s worked. It’s not up to me – or you. I feel very lucky that my life has lasted so long, because I’ve done so many things that could have knocked me out of it. But somehow I just always have the feeling that He knows what He’s doing. It’s been good so far, and it’ll probably continue to be.”

__________________

**Comment**

Please remember, getting the EM rash is highly variable and certainly not a sure thing:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/03/26/formally-challenging-cdc-advice-on-lyme-disease-rashes/

Category:

Lyme, Psychological Aspects, Treatment

Steere Publications the Past & Today

https://www.change.org/p/the-us-senate-calling-for-a-congressional-investigation-of-the-cdc-idsa-and-aldf/u/24727806?

Steere publications the past and today

JUN 20, 2019 —

Today’s letter to Dr. Fauci as a follow-up to an earlier letter found here:

https://www.change.org/p/the-us-senate-calling-for-a-congressional-investigation-of-the-cdc-idsa-and-aldf/u/24713888
——— Original Message ———-
From: CARL TUTTLE <runagain@comcast.net>
To: afauci@niaid.nih.gov
Cc: tickbornedisease@hhs.gov, (98 Undisclosed Recipients)
Date: June 20, 2019 at 7:05 AM
Subject: Antibiotics are generally effective at all stages of the disease

June 20, 2019

Office of the Director,
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID),National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD 20892
Attn: Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., Director

Dr. Fauci,

As a follow-up to my previous email dated June 17, 2019 I would like to call attention to the following Steere publications. The first dated 1977 and the latest published just this week.

1. Lyme arthritis: an epidemic of oligoarticular arthritis in children and adults in three connecticut communities. (1977)

Steere AC, Malawista SE, Snydman DR, Shope RE, Andiman WA, Ross MR, Steele FM.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/836338

Excerpt:

“The best treatment for this illness is not clear. Some physicians have reported that penicillin or tetracycline results in disappearance of the skin lesion (41,42), but others find antibiotics ineffective. Four of the patients with expanding skin lesions received penicillin but still developed arthritis.”

Carl Tuttle’s comment: Forty two years ago Allen Steere knew that antibiotics used to treat Lyme disease were not working.

2. Borrelia burgdorferi peptidoglycan is a persistent antigen in patients with Lyme arthritis (2019)

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/06/11/1904170116

Excerpt:

“Although antibiotics are generally effective at all stages of the disease, arthritis may persist in some patients for months to several years despite oral and intravenous antibiotic treatment.”

What happened over the past decades that suddenly made 30-year-old antibiotic therapy effective for treating Lyme disease in all stages especially when there are more scientific references highlighting treatment failure than success? [i]

Might I remind you Dr. Fauci that Allen Steere has been named in a racketeering lawsuit [ii] that alleges he and six other co-defendants colluded to deny persistent infection through an elaborate racketeering scheme. This scheme has been financed through tax payer dollars in the form of NIH grants. Steere’s latest study was funded through NIH Grant # AI101175 and AI144365.

Patient testimony is describing a disease that is ruining lives, ending careers while leaving its victim in financial ruin. Patients who fail 30-year-old antibiotic therapy for Lyme disease are left to fend for themselves. Hundreds of thousands (if not millions worldwide) have been harmed by these actions bought and paid for by US taxpayer dollars. Public health officials globally are blindly following what has been deceitfully established here in America. We lost forty years to this racketeering scheme when we should have been developing more effective antimicrobials.

The mishandling of Lyme disease can be traced back to vaccine development when at that time, the infection was classified as “easily diagnosed and treated.” Publications prior to Dearborn (1994) painted an entirely different picture. The 1977 Steere publication listed above is just one of those publications.

So why do we need a Lyme disease vaccine (now on fast track with the FDA) if “antibiotics are generally effective at all stages of the disease?”

The National Institutes of Health continues to finance this racketeering scheme under your watch Dr. Fauci.

Carl Tuttle

Lyme Endemic Hudson, NH

References
[i] References for persistence of Lyme disease (Lyme borreliosis) are listed alphabetically and chronologically

Compiled by: John D. Scott, Research Division Lyme Disease Association of  Ontario

April 2013 (My personal Dropbox storage area)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/reiown7v732av00/Persistence%20of%20Lyme%20Disease.doc?dl=0
[ii] Racketeering lawsuit court document

https://www.dropbox.com/s/18uyrli878ug51m/LymeDisease%20RICO%20Lawsuit.pdf?dl=0

Anti-vaxxers stopped the last Lyme disease vaccine. The FDA has just fast-tracked a new one
Anti-vaxxers stopped the last Lyme disease vaccine. The FDA has just fast-tracked a new one
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week announced plans to expedite approval of a vaccine for Lyme disease. Valneva…
https://www.newsweek.com

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Treatment

Retinal Vessel Occlusion Caused by Bartonella Infection

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6236082/

. 2018 Nov 19; 33(47): e297.
Published online 2018 Oct 29. doi: 10.3346/jkms.2018.33.e297
PMCID: PMC6236082
PMID: 31044568

A Case of Retinal Vessel Occlusion Caused by Bartonella Infection

Minji Woo,1 Somin Ahn,1 Joon Young Song,2 and Seong-Woo Kimcorresponding author1
Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer
An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc. Object name is jkms-33-e297-g003.jpg
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A 29-year-old female visited the emergency room with sudden visual loss in the right eye started on the same day. She had been suffering from fever for two days. A best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) was 0.5/0.7 in the Snellen chart. Fundus examination (Fig. 1) showed multiple retinal hemorrhages. Severe vascular sheaths around the optic disc area were present in the right eye. Candle-wax-dripping sign in the superior hemisphere were found in the left eye.

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On systemic examination, erythema of the lower extremities (Fig. 1C) and right inguinal lymph node enlargement were discovered. With systemic doxycycline (100 mg) and gentamicin (90 mg) administration, fever subsided after three days. Bartonella infection was confirmed after 10 days with in-house indirect immunofluorescent assay (IFA) analysis (immunoglobulin G; cutoff points for seropositive titer at 1:64). Lymph node biopsy showed necrotizing granulomatous lymphadenitis (Fig. 1D). On the same day, the BCVA decreased to hand motion in the right eye. When asked, she could not specify when the vision loss began. The candle-wax-dripping sign in the left eye had progressed to vascular sheath with flame-shaped hemorrhages. Fluorescein angiography shows a rack of filling of the retinal arteries. Blocked fluorescence by retinal hemorrhage was found in the whole area of right eye and in the superotemporal quadrant of left eye. Inner-retinal hyper-reflectivity of the right eye and cystoid macular edema in the left eye were revealed (Fig. 2). The impression was central retinal artery and vein occlusion for the right eye and branch retinal artery and vein occlusion for the left eye, associated with severe vasculitis secondary to Bartonella infection. The patient was treated with a systemic methylprednisolone 500 mg, anticoagulant (Enoxaparin sodium 60 mg) and Rifampin (300 mg). Three month after disease onset, the BCVA in the right eye improved to 0.1. For photographs and medical records that consisted possible identification of the patient, a consent form was obtained from the patient for use of publication.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Professor Jin-Soo Lee, Department of Internal Medicine, Inha University School of Medicine, for his help with the in-house IFA analysis.

Footnotes

Funding: This research was supported by the Bio & Medical Technology Development Program of the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), funded by the Korean government, the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIP) (NRF-2017M3A9E2056458).

Disclosure: The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.

Contributed by

Author Contributions: Conceptualization: Woo M, Kim SW. Investigation: Woo M, Ahn S. Writing – original draft: Woo M. Writing – review & editing: Ahn S, Song JY, Kim SW.

References

1. Kwon HY, Im JH, Lee SM, Baek JH, Durey A, Park SG, et al. The seroprevalence of Bartonella henselae in healthy adults in Korea. Korean J Intern Med. 2017;32(3):530–535. [PMC free article][PubMed] []
____________________

Category:

Bartonella, Eye Issues, research, Treatment

Breakthrough Paves Way For New Lyme Disease Treatment

https://www.newsleader.com/story/news/2019/06/17/new-lyme-disease-treatment-cure-ticks-virginia/1456187001/

Breakthrough paves way for new Lyme disease treatment

, Staunton News Leader
June 17, 2019 

A Virginia Tech biochemist has discovered the cellular component that contributes to Lyme arthritis, a debilitating and extremely painful condition that is the most common late stage symptom of Lyme disease, a press release said.

According to the release from Virginia Tech, the biochemist, Brandon Jutras, found that as the Lyme-causing bacteria borrelia burgdorferi multiplies, it sheds a cellular component called peptidoglycan that elicits a unique inflammatory response in the body.

“This discovery will help researchers improve diagnostic tests and may lead to new treatment options for patients suffering with Lyme arthritis,” said Jutras, lead author on the study. “This is an important finding and we think that it has major implications for many manifestations of Lyme disease, not just Lyme arthritis.”

Lyme disease is the most reported vector-borne disease in the country, and in Virginia reports have increased by more than 6,000 percent in the last fifteen years. The Centers for Disease Control, estimates that approximately 300,000 people are diagnosed with Lyme disease annually in the United States. Scientists predict that the number of people who become infected Lyme will increase as our climate continues to change.

Jutras — an assistant professor of biochemistry in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and an affiliated faculty member of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute — and his collaborators recently published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the release, the PNAS paper was four years in the making, and Jutras began this research during his post-doctoral fellowship in the lab of Christine Jacobs-Wagner, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and professor at Yale University.

“Nowadays nothing significant in science is accomplished without collaboration,” said Jutras. Co-authors on this paper ranged from bench scientists to medical doctors and practicing physicians. Dr. Allen Steere, a Harvard doctor who originally identified Lyme disease in the 1970s, assisted Jutras with his research and provided access to patient samples.

The research could provide a new way to diagnose Lyme disease and Lyme arthritis for patients with vague symptoms based on the presence of the cellular component called peptidoglycan in synovial fluid.

Read: Every spot in Virginia is a hotspot for ticks

The press release said, the team found peptidoglycan is a major contributor to Lyme arthritis in late-stage Lyme disease patients. Peptidoglycan is an essential component of bacterial cell walls. All bacteria have some form of peptidoglycan, but the form found in the bacteria that causes Lyme, borrelia burgdorferi, has a unique chemical structure. When the bacteria multiply, they shed peptidoglycan into the extracellular environment, because its genome does not have the appropriate proteins to recycle it back into the cell.

“We can actually detect peptidoglycan in the synovial fluid of the affected, inflamed joints of patients that have all the symptoms of Lyme arthritis but no longer have an obvious, active infection,” said Jutras in the release.

Peptidoglycan elicits an inflammatory response and the molecule persists in the synovial fluid, which means that our bodies continue to respond, without mounting a counter response.

Receptors in our immune system sense bacterial products and, depending on the individual’s genetic predispositions, may determine how strongly a patient’s body reacts to peptidoglycan.

The next phase of Jutras’ work is to use methods to destroy the peptidoglycan, or intervene to prevent a response, which could get rid of Lyme disease symptoms. According to the release, Jutras predicts that with either therapy patients would start recovering sooner.

Breakthrough paves way for new Lyme disease treatment, as discussed in this video provided by Virginia Tech. Video provided by Virginia Tech, Staunton News Leader

Clinical samples included in this study were obtained from patients that had confirmed cases of Lyme disease under the guidelines of the CDC, but virtually all did not respond to oral and/or intravenous antibiotic treatment, the release said. The presence of peptidoglycan in these patients’ synovial fluids may explain why some people experience symptoms of late stage Lyme disease in the absence of an obvious infection. In this case, the usual antibiotic treatments for Lyme disease would no longer be helpful, but this discovery might provide avenues for new treatments, the press release said.

Members of the Jacobs-Wagner lab purified the peptidoglycan and removed all other bacterial components and asked: is peptidoglycan all on its own capable of causing arthritis in a mouse model?

According to the release, within 24 hours post-injection, mice presented with dramatic joint inflammation, indicating that peptidoglycan can cause arthritis.

Jutras is continuing his research at Virginia Tech on peptidoglycan by more thoroughly studying its chemical composition to determine how it is able to persist in the human body. This will also help further the understanding of how this bacterial product contributes to other manifestations of Lyme disease.

“We are interested in understanding everything associated with how patients respond, how we can prevent that response, and how we could possibly intervene with blocking therapies or therapies that eliminate the molecule entirely,” Jutras said.

__________________
**Comment**
This article brings up more questions than answers.
1) Were these patients used for this study truly treated appropriately to begin with?  For example, was the mono-therapy of doxycycline only used for a short period of time?  This treatment has been shown again and again to have treatment failures from the beginning of time. For examples of effective treatment:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/02/13/lyme-disease-treatment/  In a nutshell, effective treatment takes into account pleomorphism, polymmcrobialism, and biofilm. Doxy alone will not do these things.
2) Would an anti-peptidoglycan treatment only be a bandaid covering up a systemic infection? Everything I know about borrelia would answer a resounding “yes,” to this question.  While that may not be a bad thing, we must be honest about what the treatment’s really doing as well as the fact borrelia can persist in the human body, something The Cabal isn’t admitting at this point. Again, we truly need to end this Lyme War and according to microbiologist Tom Grier, that isn’t going to happen until post mortem studies are completed:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/04/13/chronic-lyme-post-mortem-study-needed-to-end-the-lyme-wars/ Isn’t it a bit ironic that The Cabal is just fine with creating a patentable drug but NOT fine with doing the proper science that would put all of this to rest?
3) Bandaids on symptoms are used all the time to lesson pain and other symptoms; however, they shouldn’t be used at the expense of true, effective treatment for a systemic infection that’s relapsing in nature. In the case of Lyme disease, that would simply mean long-term antimicrobials. While I do not know the study parameters used here my guess would be the treatment that “didn’t work” was the mono-therapy of doxycycline which certainly doesn’t work for many coinfections such as Babesia, as well as the fact Eva Sapi has shown it to push the spirochete into the noncell wall form invitro:  https://www.dovepress.com/evaluation-of-in-vitro-antibiotic-susceptibility-of-different-morpholo-peer-reviewed-article-IDR
Just this year another study was done about it by Caskey et al.:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31057493
In a nutshell, using an anti-peptidoglycan without tandem antimicrobials could allow an infection to worsen over time to cause refractory (unmanageable) disease in patients.

This same thing can happen to Lyme/MSIDS patients who have been given catabolic steroids such as prednisone for inflammation.  Without tandem antimicrobials to continue a full-court press on pathogens, the steroids dampen the immune system and allow the pathogens to strengthen. Ask any ILADS trained doctor and they will say the same.  For an example:  http://danielcameronmd.com/steroid-use-can-lead-long-term-treatment-failure-lyme-disease-patients/  Excerpt: 

Treatment failures were found in Lyme arthritic patients who were treated with intramuscular (IM) benzathine penicillin following steroids. [3]

In another study, two patients were ill for 3 years and one patient for 6 years despite receiving intravenous (IV) ceftriaxone. The authors explained, “Patients unresponsive to ceftriaxone were more likely to have received corticosteroid treatment.” Dattwyler et al. from Stony Brook Medical Center found an “association of steroid use with an increased failure rate or worsening of disease is understandable in view of the well-known effects of these agents on the inflammatory and immune responses.”

Dattwyler advised against the use of steroids in Lyme disease patients based on these two studies. “In view of the strong association between the use of steroids and the lack of response to antibiotic therapy, we believe that glucocorticoids should not be used in the treatment of Lyme borreliosis.” [2]

This article highlights yet again the importance of needing the right research to be done. The Cabal continues full-steam ahead doing research built upon false premises that could hurt patients in the end.

 

Category:

Inflammation, Lyme, research, Treatment