Archive for the ‘Viruses’ Category

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.

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**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.

Category:

Activism, Alpha Gal Meat Allergy, Anaplasmosis, Babesia, Bartonella, Borrelia Miyamotoi (Relapsing Fever Group), Ehrlichiosis, Lyme, mosquitoes, research, Rickettsia, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Testing, Ticks, Transmission, Viruses

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.

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

Category:

research, Testing, Ticks, Transmission, Viruses

Netflix Currently Showing “Brain on Fire”

https://www.netflix.com/title/80128245

Stricken with seizures, psychosis and memory loss, a young New York Post reporter visits doctor after doctor in search of an elusive diagnosis.

  Approx. 9:30 Min

UK Interview with Susannah Cahalan who was diagnosed with a brain disorder called Autoimmune Encephalitis (AE)…7th Feb 2013

After reading the book a while back, I decided to watch the movie.  It’s a heart-wrenching story of another patient that almost got lost in the cracks and was misdiagnosed from everything from bipolar disorder to alcohol withdrawal.  It’s also another example of how a true physical problem can present like mental illness.

For more on this topic:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/10/03/treat-the-infection-psychiatric-symptoms-get-better/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/02/20/mysterious-disease-where-the-body-attacks-the-brain-more-common-than-initially-thought/  The Mayo Clinic’s new study, published in February in the journal Annals of Neurology, suggests that cases of autoimmune encephalitis aren’t nearly as rare as researchers once believed. By drawing on data from the Rochester Epidemiology Project, a medical records database in Olmsted County, Minnesota, the researchers were able to estimate that roughly 1 million people across the globe had autoimmune encephalitis at some point in their life. Each year, roughly 90,000 people may develop AE, they estimated.  “No prior studies evaluated this,” Eoin Flanagan, the lead author on the paper and an autoimmune neurology specialist at the Mayo Clinic, said in a statement.  Kelley, who is working on his own forthcoming study of the frequency of AE in young people, said his work echoes Flanagan’s findings.  “You can’t diagnose something you don’t know about, or that you don’t recognize,” Kelley told Business Insider.

In children, infections like strep throat appear to be a trigger of AE.  Susan Schulman, a pediatrician in New York, told Business Insider last year that she had seen hundreds of cases of a related condition, called PANS (pediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome), in her patients. Her first case, in 1998, was a five-year old girl from Brooklyn who flew into a panic about keeping special holiday clothes separate from her regular clothes.  “She was driving her mother crazy,” Schulman said last year. At first, she believed the girl had childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder, but medication made the child’s symptoms worse. She later returned to Schulman’s office with a nasty case of strep throat and strangely, after Schulman treated the strep with antibiotics, the OCD symptoms vanished.

The reason we need to be aware of this issue is Lyme/MSIDS can also be a trigger:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/10/01/panspandas-steroids-autoimmune-disease-lymemsids-the-need-for-medical-collaboration/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/04/11/hidden-invaders-infections-can-trigger-immune-attacks-on-kids-brains-provoking-devastating-psychiatric-disorders/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/06/30/child-with-lymemsidspans-told-by-doctors-she-made-it-all-up/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/06/14/depression-the-radical-theory-linking-it-to-inflammation/

Category:

Activism, Autism, Inflammation, Lyme, PANS, Psychological Aspects, Treatment, Viruses

The Role of Retroviruses in Chronic Illness – A Clinician’s Perspective

https://klinghardtinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/IHCAN-Dr-K-article-HERV-05.1.pdf

The Role of Retroviruses in Chronic Illness- Dietrich Klinghardt, MD, PhD

The role of retroviruses in chronic illness is greatly disputed in academic circles. However, at the Sophia Health Institute Dr DIETRICH KLINGHARDT, MD, PhD, reports seeing significant improvement in treatment outcomes – in the most severely affected patients with chronic illness – when anti- retroviral strategies are included.

The results we are seeing at the Sophia Health Institute at our locations in Seattle and Marin County would not have been possible without the brilliant work of Judy Mikovits, PhD.

What is published and what illnesses are potentially caused by, or have as a contributing factor, activated retroviruses?

  • CNS-related illnesses: ME/CFS, Gulf War Syndrome, Autism, MS, Parkinson’s, ALS, Schizophrenia
  • Auto-immune diseases: Lupus, Crohn’s, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, Polymyositis, Sjogren’s syndrome, Bechet’s Disease, primary biliary cirrhosis
  • Cancer: prostate, breast, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, mantle cell lymphoma, hairy cell leukaemia, bladder, colorectal, kidney, ovarian.

To that I am adding a list of other illnesses that have responded under my care to retroviral interventions: intractable Lyme disease, mold illness, insomnia, brain fog and all stages of a deteriorating brain, most childhood illnesses including ADHD and behavioural problems, asthma, breast cancer, lung cancer and many more.

Working backwards

What are retroviruses? The more familiar DNA viruses such as those from the “herpes family” – and many others – work their way from DNA over to RNA and from there to the manufacture of viral proteins. Retroviruses work their way backwards – from the RNA to the DNA – and then forward again from there.

Retroviruses are subdivided into different- lettered classes – Beta Retroviruses: HERV-K. Gamma Retroviruses: HERV-H and HERV-W.

The generally accepted key contributors to chronic illness are inflammation, oxidative stress and microbial infection. All of these are known triggers for retroviral activity, and in turn are also caused by retroviral activity.

Both human and animal retroviruses can infect the central nervous system (CNS). These are associated with many diseases of the CNS and cause neurological disease by several mechanisms:

1. Directly through infection of immune cells which traffic to the brain;

2. Indirectly through increases in proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines, or

3. In the absence of detectable brain inflammation indirect effects known as “bystander effects”- causing chronic retroviral replication of immune cells.

A retrovirus works via the enzyme “reverse transcriptase”. Once inside the cell, it uses the enzyme to force the cell to create viral DNA. This viral DNA becomes integrated into the host cell DNA. A retrovirus integrated into our genome may be passed from mother to child during pregnancy (Sakuma et al, 2012).

Only 2% of our DNA is protein-coding, but 6-8% of our DNA is retroviral DNA – passed down to us from our ancestors as scars from our constant encounter with an often hostile microbial and virus-rich environment (Stoyle, 2006, Mayer et al, 2011; Li et al, 2001). These viruses are referred to as Human Endogenous Retroviruses or HERVs.

However, not all embedded retroviral DNA is bad. Some sections have become a functional part of our genome because they have given us an evolutionary advantage, such as the formation of the p53 gene regulatory network (Shin et al, 2013; Barbusecu et al, 2001). Other retroviruses have to be silenced throughout life, mainly through DNA methylation and acetylation.

The transcription of retroviral DNA makes the infected person susceptible to numerous de-novo genetic mutations, including MTHFR, DNMT and other genes which control methylation. Many other illness-producing effects are known, implicating HERV-K in the pathogenesis of neuroinflammatory and autoimmune illnesses. For a patient to get well today, it is rarely enough to just interpret the genomic testing and to substitute accordingly.

Acquiring infection

How do we become infected? Retroviruses can be acquired (inhalation, blood-based products, physical contact) or the viruses already present in our DNA can be activated through influences such as a viral infection or chronic inflammation (Manghera and Douville, 2013).

For example, the Epstein Barr virus induces expression of the HERV-K envelope gene and the transactivation of MSRV, the Multiple Sclerosis retrovirus (Mameli et al, 2007; Sutkowski et al, 2001). Herpes simplex type-2 activates members of the HERV-W family. These and other mechanisms are likely responsible for the activation of HERVs seen in rheumatoid arthritis, SLE, Sjorgens disease, schizophrenia, autism, MS and cancer. Cell phone radiation has disabled many of our protective proteins (Fragopoulou et al, 2012) and so have many of the food-based toxins such as glyphosate (Seneff et al, 2017) and air-based inhalants (aluminium etc).  An unintended source of retroviruses are some vaccines as reported in Frontiers in Microbiology in January 2011).

Diagnosis

Currently PCR testing is only available to
the research community. We have to rely on indirect parameters:

  • decrease of CD56 NK cells (CD56 is involved in adhesion, migration, growth, differentiation and other cellular functions); down regulation of IL-13, IL-2, IFN gamma, TH-1 cytokines (J. Mikovits et al, 1998)
  • upregulated levels of TH-2 cytokines: IL-4, IL-10 and pro-inflammatory cytokines: IL-1, IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-alpha.
  • elevated levels of TGF beta-1: has profound effects on innate and adaptive immunity through stimulation of mast cells (often mistaken as mould-related). This may be the true cause of mastocytosis.

Other practical markers from my experience: low wbc (white blood count below 4500), low CD 56. I always include the CD 57 to rule out an active Borrelia burgdorferi infection as compounding factor.

Treatment

When the retroviruses are effectively addressed early in the treatment of chronic illness, other issues such as bacterial infections (Borrelia, Mycoplasma, Bartonella etc), mould illness, EBV, CMV, HHV-6, silent inflammation, parasites, heavy metal toxicity and many other problems become less symptomatic and often undetectable – and respond much better to treatment, even to interventions that have failed before.

Plants have been exposed to the same retroviruses as us, but for 300 million years longer – and many have developed potent adaptogens. Even though drugs like Truvada and AZT can be successfully used, I prefer the use of plant-based products that have unique anti-retroviral properties. A few examples with the key references:

  • Scutalaria root (Ruscetti et al: “Inhibition of HIV infection by baicalin – a flavonoid compound purified from Chinese herbal medicine”, Cellular & Molecular Biology Research 39, 2 (1993): 119-124).
  • Cistus incanus (Rebensburg et al: “Potent in vitro antiviral activity of Cistus incanus extract against HIV and Filoviruses targets viral envelope proteins”. Scientific Reports 6 (2016): 20394).
  • Broccoli sprouts (Furuya et al: “Sulforaphane inhibits HIV infection of macrophages through Nrf2.” PLoS Pathogens, 12.4 (2016): e1005581)
  • St John’s Wort (Meruelo, Lavie and Lavie: “Therapeutic agents with dramatic anti- retroviral activity and little toxicity at effective doses: aromatic polycyclic diones hypericin and pseudohypericin.” Proc Nal Acad Sci 85.14 (1988): 5230-5234).

In addition, I like to put my patients on a high dose of seleno-cysteine (commonly 800mcg, a dose that has been established as safe (Yang, G.; Zhou, R. (1994) “Further Observations on the Human Maximum Safe Dietary Selenium Intake in a Seleniferous Area of China”. Journal of Trace Elements and Electrolytes in Health and Disease. 8 (3–4): 159–165. Baum et al. “High risk of HIV- related mortality is associated with selenium deficiency.” JAIDS 15.5 (1997): 370-374).

Suramin, an old anti-parasitic, has turned out to be one of the most effective anti- retroviral agents. Retroviruses activate the “cell danger response” and the P2 purinergic receptor on each cell. Suramin downregulates this receptor and inhibits the binding of growth factors TGF-beta, EGF, PDGF to their receptors and thus antagonises the ability of these factors to stimulate growth of tumour cells. It can be given iv every six weeks.

I prefer giving daily homeopathic doses (Mitsuya et al: “Suramin protection of T cells in vitro against infectivity and cytopathic effect of HTLV-III.” Science 226.4671 (1984): 172-174).

When we use suitable liposomal extracts of plants in proper dose and frequency, together with selenium and “energetic copies” of immune modulators like suramin, olmetarsan (vitamin D receptor), rapamycin (mTOR), significant results can be achieved in the treatment of chronic illness that were not possible before. This new therapeutic approach should always be combined with the synergistic use of EMR protection, treatment of Lyme and co-infections, mould and metal detox.

• On June 10, Dr Klinghardt will present a one-day seminar on the correct and effective use of anti-retroviral interventions in chronic illness. For more information and to book see news story on page 9 and visit www. Klinghardtinstitute.com.

About the author

Dr DIETRICH KLINGHARDT studied medicine and psychology in Freiburg, Germany, completing his PhD on the involvement of the autonomic nervous system in autoimmune disorders. Early in his career he became interested in the sequelae of chronic toxicity (especially lead, mercury, environmental pollutants & electromagnetic fields) in the course of illness.

While working in India he encountered Eastern concepts of disease aetiology and blended them with his Western training. This laid the foundation for his 5-level system of Integrative Medicine. In the US he spent three years as a full-time emergency physician before becoming Medical Director of the Santa Fe Pain Centre.

Increasingly aware of the limitations of conventional medicine when dealing with chronic conditions, he trained in Ericksonian hypnotherapy and began to include body-oriented psychotherapeutic and counselling approaches in his work, along with neural therapy, mesotherapy injection techniques and applied psychoneurobiology. Dr Klinghardt has contributed significantly to the understanding of metal toxicity and its connection with chronic infections, illness and pain. He has been instrumental in advancing various fields within biological medicine – non-invasive pain management, injection techniques for pain and orthopaedic dysfunction, anti-ageing medicine, toxicology, paediatrics (neuro-developmental disorders), energy psychology, biological dentistry and others. He has also developed Autonomic Response Testing, a comprehensive diagnostic system that has helped many practitioners to become accomplished holistic physicians. He founded Sophia Health Institute in 2012, and is actively involved in patient care at his clinic.

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**Comment**

For more on Mikovitz’s work:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2017/10/15/vaccines-and-retroviruses-a-whistleblower-reveals-what-the-government-is-hiding/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/03/01/vaccines-could-contribute-to-disease-epidemics-due-to-retrovirus-contamination/

To hear the audio of the talk & slides, go here:  http://simplymimi.net/archives/1151

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Category:

Activism, Herbs, Inflammation, Lyme, research, Supplements, Testing, Transmission, Treatment, vaccines, Viruses

A New Weapon in the Fight Against Superbugs – TED Talk with David Brenner

https://embed.ted.com/talks/lang/en/david_brenner_a_new_weapon_in_the_fight_against_superbugs”

Since the widespread use of antibiotics began in the 1940s, we’ve tried to develop new drugs faster than bacteria can evolve — but this strategy isn’t working. Drug-resistant bacteria known as superbugs killed nearly 700,000 people last year, and by 2050 that number could be 10 million — more than cancer kills each year. Can physics help? In a talk from the frontiers of science, radiation scientist David Brenner shares his work studying a potentially life-saving weapon: a wavelength of ultraviolet light known as far-UVC, which can kill superbugs safely, without penetrating our skin. Followed by a Q&A with TED Curator Chris Anderson.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.

https://www.ted.com/speakers/david_brenner?language=en

 

 

 

 

Category:

Activism, Lyme, research, Treatment, Viruses