MyLymeData Highlights

August 26, 2019

https://www.lymedisease.org/2019-mylymedata-highlights.pdf?

All sorts of nifty graphs and charts on patients taking part in the project. If you haven’t added your information yet, go here to do so: https://www.mylymedata.org/

For more: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/05/02/mylymedata-2019-report/

 

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Activism, Lyme, research

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Nonprofit Drug Maker Produces TB Antibiotic After Private Companies Wouldn’t

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/nonprofit-drug-maker-produces-tb-antibiotic-after-private-companies-wouldnt?

PBS News Hour

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a new tuberculosis antibiotic this month could be a significant win not only for TB patients, but for a burgeoning nonprofit model for developing prescription drugs.

Please see link for entire article, but in essence this is important for a number of reasons:

  • The new drug, pretomanid, developed by the nonprofit TB Alliance, achieved a 90% success rate among patients with highly drug-resistant forms of TB who took the antibiotic as part of a three-drug, all-oral regimen over a six month period.
  • Some LLMD’s are using tuberculosis drugs successfully in refractory Lyme/MSIDS patients
  • Evidently there has been a pharmaceutical exodus from the antibiotic business due to lack of economic incentive
  • Pharmaceutical funding has shifted toward drugs that will yield more money such as cancer drugs, because drugs for chronic illnesses are immediately put to use and taken for long periods of time
  • According to some, the only sustainable model for antibiotics are nonprofits with endowments. Endowments cover basic operational costs and allow for a lengthy and tedious discovery process for antibiotics and drugs that are needed but aren’t profitable
  • Nonprofits; however, cut costs by having a reduced staff without laboratories, requiring them to partner with other labs, academic institutions, or research organizations as well as develop relationships with for-profit companies for toxicology, chemical combinations and dosages, and the actual manufacturing of the drugs.

 

 

 

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Activism, Treatment

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Babesia Microti – Borrelia Burgdorferi Coinfection

August 25, 2019

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0817/8/3/117/htm

Pathogens 2019, 8(3), 117; https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens8030117

Review

Babesia microti—Borrelia burgdorferi Coinfection

Nikhat Parveen * and Purnima Bhanot *
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Department of Microbiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, Newark, NJ 07103, USA
*Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 15 May 2019 / Accepted: 26 July 2019 / Published: 31 July 2019

Abstract

The incidence and geographic distribution of human babesiosis is growing in the U.S. Its major causative agent is the protozoan parasite, Babesia microti. B. microtiis transmitted to humans primarily through the bite ofIxodes scapularis ticks, which are vectors for a number of other pathogens. Other routes of B. microti transmission are blood transfusion and in rare cases of mother-to-foetus transmission, through the placenta. This review discusses the current literature on mammalian coinfection with B. microtiand Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent Lyme disease.
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**Comment**
Please see above link for entire study.  Highlights:
  • B. microti and Borrelia burgdorferi coinfection is common in vector (ticks) & host (animals & humans)
  • In endemic regions, almost 20% of Lyme disease patients reported concurrent babesiosis while up to 25% of babesiosis patients also had Lyme disease
  • A large percentage of patients with chronic/post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (52%) show evidence of past or active Babesia coinfection
  • There is some evidence that coinfections with a different Babesia species, B. duncani, and B. Burgdorferi may be more common than previously suspected.
  • Of the two studies that have examined B. microti—B. burgdorferi coinfection on humans both studies found patients reported symptoms of greater variety and longer duration than those infected with Bb alone
  • In C3H mice, B. microti coinfection exacerbates symptoms of arthritis caused by B. burgdorferi because B. microti causes splenic dysfunction that reduces B- and T-cell function and the production of antibodies required to control Bb infection
  • It aptly points out that besides infected ticks, humans can become infected with Babesia congenitally as well as by blood transfusions.

Recently these two articles essentially found divergent outcomes. This article shows Babesia is widespread in Canada https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/12/11/babesia-widespread-in-canada-its-high-tolerance-to-therapy/, while this one states it’s rare:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/08/21/prevalence-of-babesia-in-canadian-blood-donors-june-october-2018/

The only conclusion that can be made is that blood testing is not picking it up. I’ve read over and over that Babesia is rarely detected using one diagnostic test alone.

Yet, if I am reading this properly, they only used one test. If a sample was reactive, only then did they test it further – kind of like using 2-tiered testing for Lyme when you only move onto the Western Blot IF you test positive first using the Elisa. So these patient samples were tested only once at the beginning to determine who had reactive samples to Babesia.

This testing discrepancy that differs from reality is true for all tick-borne diseases and practitioners need to become educated in this fact as well as understand the importance of symptomology to determine a clinical diagnosis. The continued stubbornness of utilizing poor testing to weed out people in the beginning is foolish. It only seems logical to cast a wider net in the beginning rather than a narrower one. Everyone knows testing is abysmal, yet it’s followed like the Pied Piper to the doom of patients.

People are going to continue to fly under the radar with these pathogens until better testing is developed. Mainstream medicine has been lobotomized and is functioning without the capacity of a brain.

 

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Babesia, Lyme, research

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Can A New Lyme Disease Vaccine Overcome a History of Distrust and Failure?

https://www.statnews.com/2019/08/22/lyme-disease-vaccine-market/

Can a new Lyme disease vaccine overcome a history of distrust and failure?

By BRITTANY FLAHERTY @brittanyfpayne

AUGUST 22, 2019

As the threat of Lyme disease grows and fears surrounding it spread faster than the ticks that carry the infection, researchers are developing two vaccine or vaccine-like approaches to prevent this increasingly problematic disease. But don’t expect to get one soon. They are at least three to five years away from clinical use, according to their developers.

That may seem like a long time to wait, especially since there are several Lyme disease vaccines available for dogs. But it’s taken researchers almost two decades to get this close — for the second time.  See top link for full story.

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For more on the Lyme Vaccine:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/07/22/why-we-care-so-strongly-about-a-potential-lyme-vaccine/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/01/28/the-secret-x-files-the-untold-history-of-the-lymerix-vaccine/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/07/01/lyme-vaccine-fail-safety-ignored/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/12/18/concerns-about-valneva-vla15-lyme-vaccine-trials/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/07/10/new-effort-for-lyme-disease-vaccine-draws-early-fire/

https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2018/06/07/the-lyme-vaccine-russian-roulette/

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Watch Webcast of Next TBDWG Meeting Sept. 12

https://www.hhs.gov/ash/advisory-committees/tickbornedisease/meetings/2019-9-12/index.html

September 12, 2019, TBDWG Meeting (on-line)

September 12, 2019

The tenth meeting of the Tick-borne Disease Working Group will be from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET. For this meeting, the Working Group will receive reports from the eight subcommittees that were formed during the June 4, 2019, meeting and continue to focus on plans to develop the next report to the HHS Secretary and Congress on federal tick-borne activities and research, taking into consideration the 2018 report.

Federal Register Meeting Announcement

We encourage you to register exit disclaimer icon for the meeting.

Members of the public can attend the meeting via webcast. Instructions for attending this virtual meeting will be posted prior to the meeting.

Public Comment – Information and Instructions

The public will have an opportunity to present their views to the Working Group during the meeting’s public comment session or by submitting their views in writing.

Verbal comments:

  • Requests to provide verbal public comment must be submitted via email by midnight Wednesday, September 4, 2019, ET to tickbornedisease@hhs.gov. In the Subject line please enter: Verbal Public Comment – September 4 Meeting.
  • A total of 30 minutes has been set aside for verbal comments. Each person will be limited to 3 minutes in order to accommodate as many speakers as possible. If more requests are received than can be accommodated, speakers will be randomly selected.
  • Your remarks will be broadcast over a live webcast and will become part of the archived recording and meeting summary that will be posted on this website.

Written comments (posted on this webpage and accessible to the public):

  1. Written public comments must be submitted via email by midnight Wednesday, September 4, 2019, ET to tickbornedisease@hhs.gov. In the Subject line please enter: Written Public Comment – June 4 Meeting.
  2. Comments should either be provided in the body of your email, or in an attachment in Word format and equivalent to no more than 4 pages in Calibri or Times New Roman, 11 point font. Text that exceeds the 4 pages will be deleted.
  3. When you submit your written comment, please let us know how you would like to be identified with your comment. You may choose to use your name or to be anonymous. You may also list your city and/or state. If you are providing comments on behalf of an organization, please include the name of the organization. We cannot post your comment until you let us know how you would like to be identified.
  4. We are unable to post graphics, images, text boxes, tables or attachments as supporting documentation to your written comments. Please refrain from including such material in submissions.
  5. We can only create hyperlinks to “.gov” sites (state or federal).  For all other reference sites, please insert the full URL (e.g., http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics).

 

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