News and resources for neurological Lyme disease and co-infections.
Lyme, as we know, is transmitted by ticks. When it moves through the tick, it is coated with a tick salivary protein known as Salp15. The Yale team injected Salp15 into healthy mice and found that it significantly protected the mice from getting Lyme disease. When combined with outer surface proteins of B. burgdorferi, the protection was even greater.
Earlier this year, during an audit of the nation’s largest Level-4 Bio Safety Lab (BSL-4) at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, 9,220 vials of ebola, anthrax, botulinum, equine encephalitis virus, and other deadly germs were discovered in the proverbial dusty old storage area.
Unfortunately for those of us with chronic Lyme disease; all of our symptoms, the intense unbearable pain and the clear evidence of disease - the IDSA does not acknowledge the existence of chronic Lyme disease. The IDSA guidelines are clearly no longer appropriate for handling Lyme disease due to the mounting evidence of the morphic and antibiotic-resistant disease. Well, it took the medical community a long time to figure out Lyme’s cousin, syphilis, too.
Boulder Diagnostics, is dedicated to the development of point of care lateral flow diagnostic assays, and is currently developing products to detect elevated homocysteine levels and for the diagnosis of Lyme disease.
For example they recommend which are the most useful antibiotics and medicines to keep in each home for emergency purposes, also a list of the biological threats to be prepared for, and out of only 9 such diseases/pathogens, Lyme is number 8.
For those of us who are eagerly waiting to see research breakthroughs that have immediate effect on the incredibly painful and medical “no-man’s-land” of chronic Lyme Disease, it is discouraging to see one of the most successful not-for-profit advocacy groups, “Time for Lyme” dole out $25,000 to better understand the ticks digestion system.
Results from this 3-yr trial indicate that the use of fipronil passively applied to reservoir animals by bait boxes is an environmentally acceptable means to control ticks, interrupt the natural disease transmission cycle, and reduce the risk of Lyme disease for residents of treated properties.
The master gene that causes blood stem cells to turn into disease-fighting ‘Natural Killer’ (NK) immune cells has been identified by scientists, in a study published in Nature Immunology September, 15 of this year (2009). The discovery could one day help scientists boost the body’s production of these front-line killer cells, creating new ways to treat immune deficiencies and boost the body’s ability to fight disease.
The medical community will have had to change their belief about how the spirochete is passed from the tick to its host based on a recently released medical report from researchers who collaborated from the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, Connecticut:
Robert Lane, PhD, uncovered a curious quirk about Lyme disease back in 1998 and the black-legged ticks that carry it there: the infection rates for young ticks, while low, was three to four times higher than the rate in adult ticks.
Early experiments ruled out the possibility that antibodies produced by the lizard’s immune system were able to neutralize the Lyme disease bacteria.
The puzzle continued to interest Lane who found later that when young nymphal ticks feed on the fence lizards, the mysterious protein not only protects the lizard from infection — it actually leaches into the tick’s gut and kills the bacteria there. Additional lab tests showed that when infected nymphs fed on the lizards, and then metamorphosed into adult ticks, they were no longer infected.
