THURMONT, Md. – A Thurmont veterinarian is warning pet-owners of what to look for to make sure your four-legged friend doesn’t become a victim of harmful ticks.
Dr. Susan Keane at the Catoctin Veterinary Clinic says ticks that can spread Lyme disease are alive all year round, not just during the warmer months.
She says your dogs, and even cats can catch the harmful bug while playing in the backyard or through a walk in the woods.
Dr. Keane advises that regular checks through their fur, especially the legs, can help with prevention, but here are some other symptoms to look for.
“Joint pain, fever, lethargy, meaning they’re laying around, not eating, anorexia. Any dog going outside, even in a suburban yard there’s some risk of a field mouse dropping a tick or the white-tail deer that we have in Maryland,” Dr. Keane explained.
In the last 100 tests done in January at the clinic, Dr. Keane says, eight percent tested positive for Lyme disease.
Immunohistochemical (IHC) staining to detect Anaplasmaphagocytophilum in a tissue sample (CDC).
Anaplasmosis is a tick-borne illness that is reported across the globe in areas such as North America, Europe, and China.
Known infections in the United States have been on the rise ever since becoming a nationally notifiable disease to the CDC in 2000. Like bartonellosis and Lyme borreliosis, patients with this condition can present with mild to severe non-specific symptoms and diagnosis is often difficult.
We are introducing a new webpage this week that describes the infectious pathogens of the Anaplasma genus and the test options that Galaxy Diagnostics offers.
Reported cases of anaplasmosis since 2000. Before 2008, anaplasmosis cases were reported as “human granulocytic ehrlichiosis” (CDC).
Anaplasma species are transmitted primarily via bites from Ixodes ticks. The primary infectious agent is Anaplasma phagocytophilum and its primary tick vector in the United States is Ixodes scapularis. According to the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the primary vector in Europe is Ixodes ricinus. However, additional Ixodes species have been shown to carry Anaplasma species. These bacteria can be transmitted alone or as a co-infection with other tick-borne pathogens like Babesia and Borrelia species.
Anaplasma species infections can also be attributed to blood transfusions in some cases. In New York, a 78-year old patient passed away two weeks after complications from receiving a blood transfusion containing Anaplasma phagocytophilum. The New York State Department of Health found the bacterial DNA in the donor and patient samples using PCR.
When an accidental host becomes infected, Anaplasma species invade and replicate within the white blood (granulocytic) cells traveling through the bloodstream. The resulting non-specific symptoms can vary from mild to severe depending on the age and overall health status of the patient.
How do you know you have it?
Anaplasmosis should be diagnosed by a clinician that considers symptoms, the patient’s clinical history, and substantial laboratory evidence. There are multiple assays that are commonly used for Anaplasma species including serology, microscopy, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Serology tests rely on the detection of antibodies, but it can be difficult to determine whether a positive result is indicating past or current infection.
Symptoms
The non-specific and chronic symptoms associated with anaplasmosis often mimic other chronic infections and autoimmune diseases. The clinical presentations can range from mild to severe illness. Being aware of a recent tick attachment and whether Anaplasma is endemic to the region is helpful for diagnosis.
A list of common, but not all, symptoms can be seen below:
Fever
Muscle aches
Malaise
Headaches
Neurological symptoms (facial palsy, neuropathy)
Vomiting
Coughing
Diarrhea
The clinical signs for patients who are immunocompromised or have co-infections may be more severe.
Microscopy of fluid or tissue samples looks for the organism directly using a simple blood-smear or more advanced immunohistochemical (IHC) staining. However, these methods may miss species that are uncommon and have different morphological characteristics.
Galaxy Diagnostics offers highly sensitive PCR testing of blood to confirm active infection of Anaplasma species. Our assay is developed to detect Anaplasma DNA at the genus level and follow-up DNA sequencing identifies the species, if present. This broad approach is useful because it can detect Anaplasma phagocytophilum as well as other species that may cause similar symptoms.
The primary cause of anaplasmosis in the United States and Europe is Anaplasma phagocytophilum. According to the CDC, reported cases in the United States increased by 39% from 4,151 in 2016 to 5,762 in 2017. Most cases are reported in the Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western regions of the United States. The largest amount of new cases were reported in states such as Connecticut, New Jersey, and Maine. However, cases are increasingly reported outside of these areas with the geographic range expanding down into parts of Virginia.
Anaplasma capra was also identified as a potential pathogenic species by researchers in 2018. This species typically infects goats but was identified as the infectious agent causing 6% of patients with history of tick bites to experience non-specific symptoms in Northern China.
Please click to learn more about anaplasmosis and the tests that Galaxy Diagnostics offers.
Four doctors told Susan Mercurio she had MS. She had Lyme.
Kay Lyon’s daughter was prescribed powerful psychiatric drugs and sent to a locked ward. She had Lyme.
Peter Mehegan wades into the controversy that surrounds this fast growing illness. And he discovers why one Lyme disease researcher sees very bad news ahead for residents in the 128-495 corridor.
Many never get the “classic” Bull’s-eye rash. Depending on who’s counting, only 27-80% get it. An inconvenient truth is that only a quarter of the first ever patient sample had a rash:1976circularletterpdf
Dr. Steere states Lyme is over-diagnosed. I’ll bet having to eat those words has been bitter.
(Natural News) The entire fear mongering campaign surrounding measles outbreaks in the United States centers around a “big lie” that’s pushed by vaccine propagandists. All measles outbreaks, they falsely claim, are due solely to unvaccinated children. Thus, the answer to outbreaks is more vaccines, they say.
But a science paper published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, entitled, “Rapid Identification of Measles Virus Vaccine Genotype by Real-Time PCR,” has discovered something that vaccine fanatics don’t want the public to know. As it turns out, a large number of measles outbreaks are actually “vaccine reactions” from the measles vaccine itself (MMR vaccines).
“During measles outbreaks, it is important to be able to rapidly distinguish between measles cases and vaccine reactions to avoid unnecessary outbreak response measures such as case isolation and contact investigations,” the study authors write. “We have developed a real-time reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) method specific for genotype A measles virus (MeV) (MeVA RT-quantitative PCR [RT-qPCR]) that can identify measles vaccine strains rapidly, with high throughput, and without the need for sequencing to determine the genotype.”
With the help of this breakthrough science on genetic sequencing, these researchers have stumbled onto something the CDC is desperately trying to make sure the American public never learns. (Keep reading, below…)
Almost 38% of measles cases were found to be “vaccine reactions” caused by measles vaccines
As the published science paper reveals:
During the measles outbreak in California in 2015, a large number of suspected cases occurred in recent vaccinees (3). Of the 194 measles virus sequences obtained in the United States in 2015, 73 were identified as vaccine sequences (R. J. McNall, unpublished data).
In other words, measles outbreaks were occurring among children who were already vaccinated with the measles. If you do the math, nearly 38% of the genetic sequences that were conducted on supposed “measles” cases turned out to identify measles strains that originated in the vaccines themselves. Thus, more than one out of three cases of measles in the United States was actually a reaction from a measles vaccine, not “wild-type” measles.
Notably, the lying lamestream media never attributes measles outbreaks to measles vaccines. In every case, without exception, measles outbreaks are blamed exclusively on “anti-vaxxers,” even when more than one-third of measles outbreaks are actually caused by the vaccines themselves, as this breakthrough science now proves.
Measles vaccines create market demand for more vaccines by causing measles outbreaks followed by media hysteria
Thanks to breakthrough science in genetic sequencing, it’s now clear that measles vaccines are causing measles outbreaks which then lead to media hysteria over “the measles,” resulting in hyperventilating among journalists and lawmakers who demand more vaccines (while condemning anyone who dares to question the vaccine dogma of the day).
Measles vaccines, truthfully stated, are creating their own demand for more vaccines by causing measles outbreaks in children. Naturally, the entire vaccine establishment and fake news media complex refuses to report the truth about any of this, pretending that measles outbreaks are only occurring among unvaccinated children. This is how outbreaks that are caused by vaccines end up getting blamed on “anti-vaxxers,” resulting in wholesale censorship of vaccine awareness content by Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and other tech giants that universally function as the propaganda arm of Big Pharma and the CDC.
Thus, the measles vaccine false flag operation achieves both the hyping up of measles hysteria while also justifying the censorship of independent journalists who are investigating and exposing the lies of the vaccine industry. This is one more way the vaccine industry operates as a massive RICO Act racketeering cartel that involves the media, the CDC, the FDA, lawmakers and Big Pharma drug giants. The entire system exists to profit from vaccines while using children to spread infectious disease for the purpose of creating demand for yet more vaccines.
Astonishingly, this science paper also reveals that American children appear to be selectively targeted for this vaccine false flag operation. Here’s how we know that:
In Germany, only 2% of measles cases are caused by vaccines
According to the same scientific study cited here, scientists also ran genetic sequencing on measles cases in Germany. There, they found that only 11 out of 542 cases of measles could be traced back to the measles vaccine.
In other words, in Germany, only 2% of measles cases are caused by vaccines. Yet in the United States, nearly 38% of measles cases are caused by vaccines.
How can such an enormous difference exist?
The answer is obvious. Measles vaccines administered in the United States are deliberately engineered to cause more measles outbreaks for the purpose of promoting measles hysteria and pushing for more measles vaccines. It’s all a marketing ploy, and children are being deliberately infected with live measles viruses that are added to the vaccines for this purpose.
The reason the vaccine industry can get away with this is because they enjoy absolute legal immunity for all vaccines that are part of the childhood immunization schedule. Thus, even if the truth were to come out about MMR vaccines containing non-sufficiently weakened viral strains (i.e. “live” viruses), these vaccine manufacturers would have zero legal liability.
This enables them to turn vaccines into marketing weapons, exploiting the bodies of children to infect them with measles as part of the vaccination process itself. Those children then spread the measles to other children, which is why numerous measles outbreaks keep occurring among children who have been vaccinated against the measles. The deceptive media then plays its part and hypes up the outbreaks, blaming “anti-vaxxers” for everything and pushing for nationwide vaccine mandates to achieve “100% compliance,” which they imply will halt the outbreaks.
Vaccines in the United States are deliberately engineered to contain live measles viruses to cause outbreaks that feed the media frenzy
What’s especially fascinating in all this is that breakthrough science in genetic sequencing just revealed the truth about the science deception of vaccines. In other words, good science (in genetic sequencing) just helped expose bad science (vaccine propaganda).
Now we know that measles vaccines are a marketing vector for the vaccine industry, which is essentially running a medical false flag to infect U.S. children with measles for the insidious purpose of creating media hysteria that will call for more vaccines. The real purpose of vaccines, it turns out, is to promote more vaccines, not to prevent outbreaks. Infectious disease outbreaks, it turns out, are a necessary component of vaccine marketing propaganda. If measles cases ceased to exist in America, there would be no panic push to make vaccines mandatory, and the vaccine industry would miss out on billions of dollars in revenue. By keeping the measles outbreaks alive through the deliberate spread of measles through vaccines themselves, the pharmaceutical industry — which has a long, documented history of using human beings for medical experiments — keeps itself relevant and profitable.
All this should come as no surprise to any informed person, given that the vaccine industry currently generates over $30 billion a year in revenues from the sales of vaccines, almost all of which are promoted through engineered fear campaigns.
Vaccine-originated measles outbreaks are also used by Democrat propagandists like Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) or California State Senator Richard Pan to demand that the tech giantscensor all content which questions the safety of efficacy of vaccines. Once “anti-vaxxers” can be blamed for everything, the justification for silencing their independent research is sufficiently established to de-platform their channels and silence their speech.
Anyone who dares to point out the fact that the genetic sequences of nearly 38% of measles outbreaks are traced back to measles vaccines themselves will, of course, be labeled a “conspiracy theorist” and mocked by Jimmy Kimmel, even as the scientific paper supporting this has already been published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.
The bigger truth in all this is that the vaccine industry deliberately uses vaccine mandates as a biological weapons delivery system to propagate outbreaks of infectious disease as an insidious marketing plot to sell more vaccines.
Now you know why the truth about vaccines is being systematically censored out of sheer desperation.
Where to learn more truth about vaccines
Read Vaccines.news for daily news updates on vaccines.
See NVIC.org for legislative updates on vaccine laws.
Find vaccine truth videos exclusively at Brighteon.com, the YouTube alternative for truth videos on any subject.
Check out GreenMedInfo.com for authoritative articles on the dangers of vaccines and prescription medications.
Read Censored.news, the alternative to Google News, covering the internet’s most censored news sources on vaccines, medicine and politics.
Most importantly, stop using Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter or Pinterest to get your information, since all those tech giants censor all truthful information about vaccines, cancer and other topics.
Winter thaws bring out the ticks. Take precautions when heading outdoors on warm winter days to avoid tick bites. Wearing light-colored clothing and tucking pantlegs into socks can help. Credit: Pavla Zakova | Dreamstime.com
We asked disease ecologist Rick Ostfeld if we need to worry about ticks during the winter. His response is below. (TL; DR = yes)
Blacklegged ticks, which transmit the agents of Lyme disease, babesiosis, and anaplasmosis, disappear in winter, right? Well, not entirely. Although human encounters with these ticks are less likely in winter, there are plenty of ticks out in the environment lurking in a state of (almost) suspended animation.
Larval ticks that hatched the prior summer but failed to find an animal host can become dormant and remain on the forest floor in a quiescent state. The same is true of nymphal ticks, which are normally most active in spring and early summer. These two stages are unlikely to activate until day-length and temperature both increase dramatically. Adult stage ticks, in contrast, most actively seek hosts in the late fall.
The females that were able to engorge on host blood last fall are overwintering in soil pores or under leaf litter, while slowly converting host blood into eggs that they will lay next spring or summer. Some of the adults that did not find a host have died of starvation or other causes, but the unfed survivors will activate any winter or spring day with above-freezing temperatures. In the southern United States, these ticks can be active all year, but even in the northeastern and upper Midwestern regions, ticks can bite during any warmish spell in January, February, and beyond.
As part of The Tick Project, we invite participating households to mail us ticks found embedded in or crawling on people or pets, and we typically receive quite a few even in the coldest months. The riskiest seasons for diseases transmitted by blacklegged ticks are spring and summer, but risk never goes away entirely. And, our 25-years of data from Dutchess County, NY show that, as the climate warms, the ticks come out earlier in the year, advancing the dates of greatest risk.
