BOSTON — On September 8, Nantucket’s newspaper, The Inquirer and Mirror, reported the number of confirmed cases of Lyme disease had reached 262 for 2008. This represented an increase of almost 40% over all of 2007. In 2006 there were only 23 cases confirmed.

It was only 33 years ago that Lyme disease was recognized as the cause of a mysterious cluster of juvenile arthritis cases in the town of Lyme, Conn. In 1982 the causative agent, a bacteria named Borrelia burgdorferi, was isolated from the mid-gut of deer ticks. Since that time Lyme disease has become the most common vector-borne disease in the U.S. and has vaulted into the top ten of all infectious diseases. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health reports the incidence of Lyme disease as confirmed cases per 100,000 population. In 2005 there were 36.3 reports per 100,000 statewide compared to the national average of 8.2 cases. At the current rate Nantucket will surpass 1,000 cases per 100,000 giving it one of the highest incidences in the world.

According to Massachusetts native Constance Bean, former coordinator of health education at MIT and author of Beating Lyme: Understanding and Treating This Complex and Often Misdiagnosed Disease, the Lyme disease problem on Nantucket is just the tip of the iceberg. “The higher numbers are not due to improved diagnosis, “she tells Infection Protection. “By all estimates only one in ten cases is reported. We don’t have true numbers on the Lyme epidemic because we don’t have reliable tests. It is estimated that 1.7 million Americans are infected. We have more ticks. The ticks have no natural enemies and more of the ticks are being infected.”

Dr. Dan Cameron is an epidemiologist and an expert in Lyme disease. He is board president of the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society. “Yes”, he tells Infection Protection, “Lyme disease is certainly the epidemic of our time”. He agrees that Lyme disease is under-reported and under-treated. “The most effective way to address Lyme disease is to foster greater understanding of the disease within the medical community. Increased incidence of Lyme disease can be attributed to several factors, including the continued spread of human populations into wooded habitats with increased exposure to ticks, global warming that has increased survivability of ticks, and the geographic spread of infested tick populations to all 50 states.”

– by Dr. Chris Iliades, MD,  Boston Correspondent, Infection Protection

Posted: November 29th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, Diseases, Impaired Immunity, Lyme disease.
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A number of middle Tennesseans are claiming that they have Lyme disease. But the medical community there is not recognizing their disease state.

Lyme disease is contracted through tick bites. The consensus of the medical community is that Lyme disease is almost impossible to contract in middle Tennessee. Doctors there say that Lyme disease only happens in other parts of the country.

William Shaffner is a nationally recognized expert in infectious disease who said that Lyme can cause real complications if untreated — even meningitis, a severe spinal infection.

There is no evidence, he said, that anyone in middle Tennessee has ever contracted Lyme disease in middle Tennessee.

Shaffner said that unreliable labs have given people incorrect diagnoses.

But, local resident Sara Schell told the news media there she got Lyme disease from a tick bite in Brentwood in 2005, and Krista Sherrod also told reporters she was infected with Lyme disease from a tick bite at a picnic in Fairview.

“I really felt like I was dying,” said Schell. “My brain was numb and cold and felt like a bowling ball. I had a rash all over me.”

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

The tell-tale sign of a Lyme disease infection.

Posted: October 20th, 2008 under Diseases, Lyme disease, Meningitis.
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Researchers indicate that a thriving deer population on the East Coast may mean a higher prevalence of Lyme disease this summer.

Dr. Gloria Scholl, chairwoman of the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance, said there is a direct correlation between deer populations and the prevalence of Lyme disease in communities throughout her Connecticut county, and on the East Coast.

Research results showed that 60 percent of the adult ticks collected in Greenwich, Bethel, Easton, Newtown and Redding were infected with Lyme disease.  The study is part of a 14-town research project conducted by the alliance in efforts to find the prevalence of Lyme disease in trafficked areas like playgrounds and parks.

The science that connects deer to Lyme disease involves the deer tick’s need for adult deer to reproduce. While smaller animals like rabbits, chipmunks and mice carry the spirochete bacteria that causes Lyme disease, the adult deer tick can’t reproduce without feeding off deer. Deer can carry about 100 ticks at a time.

Throughout the different phases of a deer tick’s life, it will feed on different animals. Tick larvae are small and mostly feed off mice and chipmunks where they pick up Lyme disease. Larger ticks will still feed on the smaller animals, research is still being conducted on what part of deer blood allows  the tick to reproduce.

According to the Department of Environmental Protection, about 29,000 human cases of Lyme disease were reported in Connecticut from 1996 through 2007.

Dr. Daniel Cameron, president of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, said he continues to see more chronic cases.

What is the source of this new found deer and tick population? 

Dr. Scholl said the deeper you go into mature woodlands there are dark areas with less vegetation for the deer to feed.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director

Parasitical ticks infesting deer populations throughout New England. 

Posted: June 5th, 2008 under Diseases, Lyme disease.
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Lyme disease is growing at four times the rate of AIDS and is becoming America’s fastest-proliferating and most poorly diagnosed disease, according to a report in the online edition of The San Francisco Chronicle. The disease is also known as Neuroborreliosis.  

For the 50 percent of people who develop the characteristic bull’s-eye rash immediately after being bit, treatment can be relatively simply. For those who don’t, the disease takes a silent toll over the years, harming different bodily systems, including the central nervous system.

Preventive measures include: using insect repellent with DEET, donning white clothing to make any ticks visible, tucking in loose clothing and avoiding tick-infested areas like tall grass and brush near deer trails. If bitten by a tick, immediately remove the tick and save its dead carcass to assist doctors in possible future diagnoses.

This disease has become highly politicized, as insurers, federal health agencies and academia, are battling against Lyme doctors and patients. After seeing five respected doctors and receiving four misdiagnoses, one patient, Robert Bueltman, of Montara, Calif.,  learned that he was infected not only with Lyme disease but with another tick-borne infection as well.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is probing the the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA), which developed the guidelines that most doctors use to diagnose the disease, according to the report in the paper.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director

Ticks spread Lyme Disease and bacteria, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Posted: May 26th, 2008 under Diseases, Lyme disease.
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A tick expert reckons that a combination of unexpected ecological factors are likely to make 2008 “a big year for ticks,” and he recommends taking appropriate precautions to reduce the chances of being bitten.

Posted: May 7th, 2008 under Diseases, Lyme disease.
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New research into the link between Lyme disease and Alzheimer’s is revealing some startling findings. According to Dr. Alan McDonald, MD,  Lyme bacerial infection is sometimes misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s, as the two diseases share common symptoms.  The disease appears in a number of stealth forms, including biofilms. Biofilms are one of the various stealth forms taken by Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria to evade antibiotics.

Dr. MacDonald discusses his research in a well-documented case study at Stony Brook Hospital, which showed spirochetal DNA in the brain tissue of a man who was diagnosed with Lyme and eventually succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease, therefore “connecting the link between Lyme disease and Alzheimer’s in some patients,” he says.

“It helps to understand that a group of spirochetes with the DNA and the potential to cause disease can exist without having a single spiral form at all, but they have other diverse forms as they unite into a colony to survive under adverse conditions,” says Dr. MacDonald, who will present a summary of his research into biofilms at the 3rd Annual Lyme Disease Symposium at New Haven University, Connecticut on May 17.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director

To hear an audio interview with Dr. MacDonald, go to http://www.lyme-disease-research-database.com/alan-macdonald-transcription.html

Posted: April 14th, 2008 under Alzheimer's, Audio-Video Reports, Diseases, Lyme disease.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLX4KF7xzv0

Important information here.

– The Editors

Posted: March 31st, 2008 under Audio-Video Reports, Lyme disease.
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The Hartford Courant, the nation’s oldest newspaper, is reporting: Lyme disease patients across the nation have embraced Dr. Charles Ray Jones of Hamden because of his willingness to prescribe long-term antibiotics in defiance of conventional medical wisdom. On Tuesday, state regulators put the 81-year-old pediatrician on probation for two years — not because of the controversial way he treats Lyme patients, but for diagnosing two Nevada children he had never met with Lyme disease and prescribing them antibiotics over the phone.

After hearings that lasted 18 months and triggered grumbles Tuesday from more than 100 Jones supporters in the audience at the Legislative Office Building, the Connecticut Medical Examining Board, without a dissenting vote, fined Jones $10,000 and ruled that he must pay a medical monitor to oversee his New Haven-area practice.

See,

http://www.courant.com/news/health/hc-lymedoc1219.artdec19,0,4448730,print.story?coll=hc_sports_baseball_yankees_promo

We understand that Doctor Jones prescribes antibiotics to treat chronic Lyme disease, a condition many infectious disease specialists say is a rare condition. The board and the Department of Public Health, of the state of Connecticut, sidestepped the controversial issue of how best to treat people who have symptoms of a disease that, left unchecked, can cause devastating fatigue and neurological problems. The board’s action focused on the propriety of Jones’ long-distance Lyme diagnosis of a brother and sister who lived in a state where the disease is rare. – The Editors

Posted: December 20th, 2007 under Lyme disease, News.
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