Archive for the ‘Viruses’ Category

Asian Tick Now in New York

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, this is no benign little sucker…..

First RMSF Death in Wisconsin

https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/news/releases/071018.htm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 10, 2018
CONTACT: Jennifer Miller, 608-266-1683
Elizabeth Goodsitt, 608-266-1683
Jo Foellmi, 608-785-5753

DHS Confirms Death of a La Crosse County Resident from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever

State and local health departments urge residents to take precautions to protect against tick bites

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services and the La Crosse County Health Department today announced the first documented death from Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) in the state.

RMSF is rarely reported in Wisconsin and most commonly occurs in the central and southeastern regions of the United States. Most tickborne diseases transmitted in Wisconsin are spread by the blacklegged (or deer) tick; RMSF, however, is spread by the bite of the American dog (or wood) tick (Picture Attached). Early symptoms of RMSF can be mild and typically include fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, rash, and stomach pain. If left untreated, however, a RMSF infection can rapidly develop into a serious illness.

dog-tick-closeup-rocky-mountain-spotted-fever

American dog tick, which can transmit RMSF

“We are saddened to learn of this death and encourage Wisconsin residents to take steps to protect themselves and their families from tick bites while enjoying the outdoors,” said Karen McKeown, State Health Officer.

  • Use an insect repellent with at least 20% DEET or another EPA-registered repellent according to the label instructions.
  • Use 0.5% permethrin products on clothing, socks, and shoes according to label instructions.
  • Stay on trails and avoid walking through tall grasses and brush.
  • Wear long sleeves and pants, and tuck pants into socks and shirts into pants to avoid ticks crawling under clothing.
  • Check your entire body for ticks after being outdoors.
  • Take a shower as soon as possible after coming in from outdoors.
  • Place clothes in the dryer on high heat for 10 minutes to kill any ticks on clothing.
  • Use a veterinarian-prescribed tick prevention treatment on pets.

Of the illnesses spread by ticks in Wisconsin, Lyme disease is the most common, but ticks can also spread anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, and more rarely RMSF and Powassan virus. Many people who contract a tickborne disease do not recall a tick bite, so it’s also important to be aware of the common symptoms of tickborne disease such as fever, rash, headache, body aches, and fatigue.

Most diseases spread by ticks in Wisconsin, including Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, and RMSF, can be effectively treated with antibiotics, making early diagnosis critical. If symptoms develop after a tick bite or after possible tick exposure, see a health care provider.

__________________

**Comment**

Story here:  http://amp.wisn.com/article/wisconsin-woman-dies-from-rocky-mountain-spotted-fever/22108466

Jo Foellimi, a La Crosse County public health nurse, said the woman was bit while camping in western Wisconsin in early May.  The woman was diagnosed with RMSF in mid-June and died days later.  Foellimi said the woman was in her late 50s but declined to identify her.

More on RMSF:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/06/12/georgia-mom-warns-others-after-son-contracts-rocky-mountain-spotted-fever-after-tick-bite/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2015/08/13/severe-case-of-rmsf-had-to-remove-patients-arms-and-legs/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/06/10/two-deaths-from-rmsf-indiana-has-tbis/

Treatment is doxycycline:  https://www.uptodate.com/contents/treatment-of-rocky-mountain-spotted-fever  Empiric therapy with doxycycline should be started if the diagnosis of Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) is suspected, even if the symptoms are mild.

Pediatricians State New WHO AEFI Guidelines Put Children’s Lives at Risk & 200 Evidence-based Reasons Not to Vaccinate

https://www.moneylife.in/article/new-guidelines-from-who-put-childrens-life-at-risk-paediatricians/54601.html

New Guidelines from WHO Put Children’s Life At Risk: Paediatricians

Moneylife Digital Team
06 July 2018

Two leading paediatricians in India have urged the World Health Organization (WHO) to urgently revise its manual on classification of Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI), warning that the new guidelines put children’s life at risk.

This needs to be done “urgently in the interest of child safety,” Doctors Jacob Puliyel at St Stephen’s Hospital in Delhi, and Pathik Naik of Children Hospital in Surat, say in a report published in the prestigious journal ‘F1000Research’

Under WHO’s revised manual on AEFI, only those adverse reactions observed during clinical trials of a vaccine, should be classified as vaccine related. All new serious adverse reactions including deaths seen during post-marketing of the vaccine should be considered as ‘coincidental’ or ‘unclassifiable’, and the vaccine should not be blamed.

The WHO has also changed the definition of “causal association,” the doctors say. Under the revised guidelines, if there is an alternate explanation for the adverse event, or another factor is involved, causative association with vaccine should not be made.

“In other words, if after vaccination, a child with an underlying congenital heart disease develops cardiac failure, it would not be considered causally related to the vaccine.”

The revised classification by WHO “is a major step backward for patient safety,” the authors say, adding, “This could embolden vaccine manufacturers to be more reckless with regard to adverse reactions.”.

Puliyel and Naik note that the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety has documented many deaths in children with pre-existing heart disease after they were administered the pentavalent vaccine (combined diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, Hib, and hepatitis-B vaccine).

“Under WHO’s new definition of causal association, these deaths would not be acknowledged as related to vaccination.”

Both Sri Lanka and Vietnam governments withdrew the pentavalent vaccine following the deaths of five children in Sri Lanka and 12 in Vietnam soon after vaccination.

But WHO investigating teams declared that the deaths were ‘unlikely’ to be related to vaccination, the report says. 

The authors point out that a new study in India, showed that the switch from DPT (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis) to pentavalent vaccine almost doubled the deaths following vaccination.

“A large number of these deaths could have been avoided had the AEFI manual not been revised.”

According to their report, the consequence of India adopting WHO’s new classification can be seen from the causality assessment of 132 serious AEFI cases uploaded on the website of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Of the total AEFI cases, 54 babies died and 78 survived,

“but not even one death was classified as vaccine-related. Nearly all the deaths were simply classified as unclassifiable or coincidental.”

Vaccines are drugs used as a preventive measure, given to healthy persons.  Adverse events following immunization must be monitored more carefully than other drugs, the authors note.

“A credible immunization safety evaluation and monitoring system is essential for the success of immunization programmes.”

Adverse reaction and deaths may not show up as significantly increased in small safety studies. However, records of all deaths and serious adverse events following vaccinations should be maintained and periodically reviewed for safety signals.

According to the authors, WHO’s new AEFI classification scheme “that allows for an outright denial of any new causative association with vaccination” could fall foul of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Adverse reaction and deaths may not show up as significantly increased in small safety studies. However, records of all deaths and serious adverse events following vaccinations should be maintained and periodically reviewed for safety signals.

“Paradoxically, the AEFI algorithm is said to be for vaccine safety,” says Puliyel. “Perhaps we need a scheme for public safety rather than vaccine safety.”

Please see:

200 Evidence-Based Reasons NOT To Vaccinate – FREE Research PDF

http://cdn.greenmedinfo.com/sites/default/files/gmipub_58635_anti_therapeutic_action_vaccination_all.pdf  Written By:  GreenMedInfo Research Group

Also, Lyme/MSIDS patients need to consider vaccinations very carefully as vaccines have reactivated latent infections:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/12/02/scottish-doctor-gives-insight-on-lyme-msids/…..young women who fell ill after their HPV vaccination, which seems to have stimulated a latent Lyme infection to reactivate.

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/04/24/gardasil-and-bartonella/   Asymptomatic girls after receiving Gardasil activated dormant Bartonella which was confirmed by testing.

Dr. Klinghardt in this article states that many patients improve after dealing with retroviruses which can be acquired from vaccines:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/06/23/the-role-of-retroviruses-in-chronic-illness-a-clinicians-perspective/  An unintended source of retroviruses are some vaccines as reported in Frontiers in Microbiology in January 2011.

Since retroviral contaminated vaccines was first reported to the CDC, NIH, FDA, and other government agencies in 1991 by American immunologist Elaine DeFreitas, the government did absolutely nothing for over two decades until the FDA approved technologies developed by the Cerus Corporation in 2014 to clean up the problem.

Microbiologist Judy Mikovitz sounded the alarm and was viciously persecuted:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/10/15/vaccines-and-retroviruses-a-whistleblower-reveals-what-the-government-is-hiding/

But unless your ear is to the ground, you probably didn’t even hear about it.  Yet many are probably dealing with it.

Data suggests that 6% of the U.S. population is harboring a retrovirus in their bodies that can develop into an acquired immune deficiency. It began with trials of polio vaccines and yellow fever vaccines given in the early 1930s. This is when the first recorded cases of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and autism appeared. It involved the use of laboratory mice to prepare vaccines for human use. Retrovirus exposure intensified in the 1970s as new vaccines and pharmaceutical products were developed. These retroviruses and related infectious agents are now associated with dozens of modern chronic illnesses – perhaps nearly all of them. In these diseases, infection leads to inflammation — and unresolved inflammation can lead to chronic disease.

Even though 20 million Americans are likely to be infected, not everyone will develop serious illness.  Retroviruses in the human body are like sleeping giants. They are quiet until they are activated in immune deficient people.  Once activated, they create diseases such as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, also called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Chronic Lyme disease, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), numerous cancers, and a wide range of other autoimmune, neuroimmune, and central nervous system diseases. 

These retroviruses can be passed between family members through body fluids.

It is not unusual to find a family where everyone tests positive for a retrovirus, but only one person is experiencing a retrovirus-related illness. Symptom free carriers are common in human retroviral infections.
And our government hid it.

Do your research on vaccines and think long and hard about it as acquiring Lyme/MSIDS can be the trigger that activates retroviruses and vice a versa.

 

We Have No Idea How Bad the US Tick Problem Is

https://www.wired.com/story/we-have-no-idea-how-bad-the-us-tick-problem-is/
AUTHOR: MEGAN MOLTENIMEGAN MOLTENI
SCIENCE
7.04.18

WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW BAD THE US TICK PROBLEM IS

WHEN RICK OSTFELD gets bitten by a tick, he knows right away. After decades studying tick-borne diseases as an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, Ostfeld has been bitten more than 100 times, and his body now reacts to tick saliva with an intense burning sensation. He’s an exception. Most people don’t even notice that they’ve been bitten until after the pest has had time to suck up a blood meal and transfer any infections it has circulating in its spit.

Around the world, diseases spread by ticks are on the rise. Reported cases of Lyme, the most common US tick-borne illness, have quadrupled since the 1990s. Other life-threatening infections like anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever are increasing in incidence even more quickly than Lyme. Meat allergies caused by tick bites have skyrocketed from a few dozen a decade ago to more than 5,000 in the US alone, according to experts. And new tick-borne pathogens are emerging at a troubling clip; since 2004, seven new viruses and bugs transmitted through tick bite have shown up in humans in the US.

Scientists don’t know exactly which combination of factors—shifting climate patterns, human sprawl, deforestation—is leading to more ticks in more places. But there’s no denying the recent population explosion, especially of the species that carries Lyme disease: the black-legged tick.

“Whole new communities are being engulfed by this tick every year,” says Ostfeld. “And that means more people getting sick.

Tick science, surveillance, and management efforts have so far not kept pace. But the country’s increasingly dire tick-borne disease burden has begun to galvanize a groundswell of research interest and funding.

In 1942, Congress established the CDC specifically to prevent malaria, a public health crisis spreading through mosquitoes. Which is why many US states and counties today still have active surveillance programs for skeeters. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses data from these government entities to regularly update distribution maps, track emerging threats (like Zika), and coordinate control efforts. No such system exists for ticks.

Public health departments are required to report back to the CDC on Lyme and six other tick-borne infections. Those cases combined with county-level surveys and some published academic studies make up the bulk of what the agency knows about national tick distribution. But this data, patchy and stuck in time, doesn’t do a lot to help public health officials on the ground.

“We’ve got national maps, but we don’t have detailed local information about where the worst areas for ticks are located,” says Ben Beard, chief of the CDC’s bacterial diseases branch in the division of vector-borne diseases. “The reason for that is there has never been public funding to support systematic tick surveillance efforts.

That’s something Beard is trying to change. He says the CDC is currently in the process of organizing a nationwide surveillance program, which could launch within the year. It will pull data collected by state health departments and the CDC’s five regional centers about tick prevalence and the pathogens they’re carrying to build a better picture of where outbreaks and hot spots are developing, especially on the expanding edge of tick populations.

The CDC is also a few years into a massive nationwide study it’s conducting with the Mayo Clinic, which will eventually enroll 30,000 people who’ve been bitten by ticks. Each one will be tested for known tick diseases, and next-generation sequencing conducted at CDC will screen for any other pathogens that might be present. Together with patient data, it should provide a more detailed picture of exactly what’s out there.

Together, these efforts are helping to change the way people and government agencies think about ticks as a public health threat.

“Responsibility for tick control has always fallen to individuals and homeowners,” says Beard. “It’s not been seen as an official civic duty, but we think it’s time whole communities got engaged. And getting better tick surveillance data will help us define risk for these communities in areas where people aren’t used to looking for tick-borne diseases.”

The trouble is that scientists also know very little about which interventions actually reduce those risks.

“There’s no shortage of products to control ticks,” says Ostfeld. “But it’s never been demonstrated that they do a good enough job, deployed in the right places, to prevent any cases of tick-borne disease.”

In a double-blind trial published in 2016, CDC researchers treated some yards with insecticides and others with a placebo. The treated yards knocked back tick numbers by 63 percent, but families living in the treated homes were still just as likely to be diagnosed with Lyme.

Ostfeld and his wife and research partner Felicia Keesing are in the middle of a four-year study to evaluate the efficacy of two tick-control methods in their home territory of Dutchess County, an area with one of the country’s highest rates of Lyme disease. It’s a private-public partnership between their academic institutions, the CDC, and the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation, which provided a $5 million grant.

Ostfeld and Keesing are blanketing entire neighborhoods in either a natural fungus-based spray or tick boxes, or both. The tick boxes attract small mammal hosts, which get a splash of tick-killing chemicals when they venture inside. They check with all the human participants every two weeks for 10 months of the year to see if anyone’s gotten sick. By the end of 2020 the study should be able to tell them how well these methods, used together or separately on a neighborhood-wide scale, can reduce the risk of Lyme.

“If we get a definitive answer that these work the next task would be to figure out how to make such a program more broadly available. Who’s going to pay for it, who’s going to coordinate it?” says Ostfeld. “If it doesn’t work then perhaps the conclusion is maybe environmental control just can’t be done.”

In that case, people would be stuck with pretty much the same options they have today: protective clothing, repellants, and daily partner tick-checks. It’s better than nothing. But with more and more people getting sick, the US will need better solutions soon.

________________

**Comment**

Great article pointing out the scary fact that only 6 pathogens transmitted by ticks are being reported on.  There are currently 18 pathogens and counting…..so the numbers are woefully inadequate.

Here’s the list so far:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/07/01/one-tick-bite-could-put-you-at-risk-for-at-least-6-different-diseases/

Babesiosis
Bartonellosis
Borrelia miyamotoi
Bourbon Virus
Colorado Tick Fever
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic Fever
Ehrlichiosis/Anaplasmosis
Heartland Virus
Meat Allergy/Alpha Gal
Pacific Coast Tick Fever: Richettsia philipii
Powassan Encephalitis
Q Fever
Rickettsia parkeri Richettsiosis
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
STARI: Southern Tick-Associated Rash Illness
Tickborne meningoencephalitis
Tick Paralysis
Tularemia

And the number keeps growing…..but nobody’s keeping score.

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)