Dr Daniel Cameron is a name you can expect to hear more of.  He is the new “Rock Star” for chronic Lyme disease sufferers, and the cutting edge researchers around the world.

Dr. Daniel Cameron is a highly respected expert in the Lyme disease field, also, an actively practicing medical doctor in Mt. Kisco New York, as well as the author of over thirty scientific papers on Lyme disease.  Additionally, Dr. Cameron is the past President of ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases) from October 2007 to October 2009, and on the front line; raising money for more research, securing financing, medical and political support as well as test subjects who are eager to join the data collection today, but also, finding patients who were treated in the past in a certain way and following their progress or treatment failure, and then putting the information together in such a way that even Dr. Steere will have a tough time refuting his meticulous research.

On June 18, 2010, Dr. Cameron released a scientific paper that is sending shock waves through the medical community for the rigorous standard of testing and reporting, with explosive conclusions which at the very least will demand further testing, especially when you begin to evaluate medical records showing the terrible suffering of children that could have been avoided with more proactive and serious treatment at the initial exposure to Lyme infection.

The report shows far greater suffering caused by delayed treatment, than would otherwise be the case, especially with neurological symptoms and arthritic symptoms and pain.   The results demand further investigation, in spite of the fact that the numbers of subjects cited in Dr. Cameron’s study are nothing to be sneezed at.

Considering the embarrassing lack of research thus far with respect to such an overwhelming and terrifying epidemic, along side the enormous political and medical debate that is bankrupting thousands and turning whole families out of their homes -  it is about time that more serious research be prioritized to stop the fractious and damaging posturing in favor of saving lives.

There are spiteful, mean-spirited people who will respond that Lyme disease does not cause death, but that death is caused by the hotly debated long-term antibiotic treatment and occasional flukes.  A spokesman from the IDSA (Infectious Disease Society of America) describes chronic Lyme disease as “the aches and pains of daily living.”   Certainly not a life threatening disease.  But those of us who have chronic Lyme disease already know how fragile our hold on life becomes.

Chronic Lyme disease takes lives even when there is a breathing shell left in place of the vibrantly active “pre-Lyme” person.  If life is defined by the heart beating perhaps there are many more with Lyme who suffer silently.  But I contend that those of us with bad cases of chronic Lyme are the “un-dead” – the “Lyme ghosts” living in agonizing pain – far, far beyond the aches and pains of daily living – unable to contribute to our families, friends, communities …in the meaningful way we once did.

And for children, who have yet to taste the pleasures of vibrant life – they don’t understand what they have lost.  So it is up to the adults to protect these victims and bring them back to health (God Bless Dr. Jones).

I think it is safe to say that Dr. Cameron is leading the way towards a new understanding od chronic Lyme disease, which is quite a coup when the entire IDSA is on record as not believing in the existence of chronic Lyme disease!

To read more about Dr. Cameron go to http://www.lymeproject.com/index.html.

I hate to admit my growing distrust of any news related to Lyme disease that is released by any government approved agency.  But in this case I am praying that this important information from the California Health Department Division of Communicable Disease Control is true.

An epidemiologist who used to work at the State’s Health Department, Robert Murray, reported that the percentage of infected deer ticks in high Lyme disease areas such as Connecticut is 30 to 60 percent. But the percentage of black-legged ticks — the closely related cousins that carry Lyme disease in California — is only 1 to 2 percent, and only as high as 6 percent in areas such as Mendocino county, where the most Lyme disease cases are found.

According to California’s recent data, in California, only about one in every 200,000 persons is infected with Lyme disease as compared to Connecticut – the epicenter of Lyme disease the rate is 100 times higher. Unofficially we can only guess, but the recorded numbers at the National Center for Disease Control are admittedly only 10% of the actual numbers.  But still one would suspect that the differences would be uniformly off.

In 1998, Sabin Russell, a reporter for the San Fransisco Chronicle wrote a provocative article with what appears to be hard evidence as to why the rate of Lyme disease occurrence grows less rapidly in California, and not by just a little bit.

As far back as the 1990′s researchers suspected that a yet- to-be-identified protein in the lizard’s blood destroys the microbes that would otherwise flourish in the tick’s belly (and is later transmitted to human victims.)

“We’ve speculated on this for years, and now we have fairly good evidence that this is the case,” said Robert Lane, a University of California at Berkeley insect biologist who has been studying ticks and Lyme disease for more than a decade.

Lane and his colleague Gary Quistad conducted a series of laboratory experiments using young Lyme disease-infected ticks and fence lizards.

In the nymphal stage during which they feed on the blood of lizards, the ticks are only about the size of a poppy seed. But it is common to find 30 to 40 at one time sharing the blood of a single fence lizard.

Lane  discovered that a substance found in the blood of the common western fence lizard kills Lyme disease bacteria in the gut of juvenile ticks that feed on it. It may help explain why there is far less Lyme disease in California than in the eastern United States, where the lizard does not live.

The western fence lizard — a commonly found species dubbed the blue belly lizard in California – can carry an average of 30 juvenile black legged ticks, which are about the size of a poppy seed. Three stages of tick development Larval Ticks pass through three stages of development. During each stage they eat one  “blood meal.”  ‘ Larval ticks become infected with Lyme disease when they feed on rodents.

Lane had determined eight years ago that the lizards appeared to be immune to Lyme disease despite infestation with tick nymphs. His latest research, published recently in the Journal of Parasitology, suggest why this happens.

Berkeley’s Tilden Park served as the field laboratory for Lane, where he previously also uncovered a curious quirk about Lyme disease 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.

Test tube experiments found that Lyme disease bacteria bathed in lizard’s blood died within one hour, while control samples grown in mouse blood lasted three days.

In another experiment, the researchers heated lizard blood to the boiling point, and found that it no longer killed the bacteria in a test tube. The sum of these tests points to what Lane calls a “spirochete-killing factor” that is probably a large protein.

“It’s an extremely important paper,” said Vicky Kramer, chief of the vector-borne disease section of the California Department of Health Services.

Researchers are now trying to determine the precise nature of the Lyme disease-killing protein, and perhaps find out if it can be used to create a treatment for the disease.

Today, a decade later, Robert Lane has earned his PhD, and is a professor at U.C. Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management and supervises several projects aimed at expanding our knowledge of the relationship of various isolates of LD spirochetes (and other emerging tick-borne disease agents in the bacterial genera  (Anaplasma, Bartonella, Borrelia, and Ehrlichia) to their vectors and  hosts.

Spirochetes isolated from ticks and wildlife are being characterized antigenically and genetically, and the infectivity of selected isolates for vertebrates and ticks evaluated.

The ability of human and nonhuman-biting ticks to acquire, maintain and transmit the LD spirochete, and the role of lizards, birds and mammals in perpetuating it have been and still are being assessed both experimentally and in the field. Intrinsic and extrinsic factors that contribute to the vector efficiency of different ticks and to the reservoir competence of mammals also are being studied.

Another current focus of Dr. Lane’s research program is to determine the factors that elevate the risk of human exposure to ticks in endemic areas of northern California, particularly in dense woodlands and mixed hardwood forests.

According to the University, these studies are being conducted in wild land and recreational areas, and in some domestic settings in both rural and semi-rural communities endemic for LD.

It is anticipated that these investigations will clarify various ecological and epidemiological factors that place humans at heightened risk of exposure to the LDS and other emerging tick-borne infections at different spatial scales, and enable us to develop predictive models to assess LD risk at both the county and state levels by means of remote sensing and ground-truthing ecological studies.

Dr. Lane explains the ultimate goal of this research to use the basic knowledge gleaned from the previous and ongoing projects to develop and implement strategies for reducing human exposure to tick-borne disease agents.

The frustrating part of all this research is the incredible length of time it takes to go from one theory to a finished product that can help us now.

The exciting part of Dr. Lane’s research is that his focus is centered on using several host-targeted methods  for disseminating environmentally safe pesticides to rodent reservoir hosts (such as the lizard) of the LD spirochete that have already have been assessed.

Lets hope we don’t have to wait another decade for this brilliant scientist to deliver the goods from his promising research.

When the CDC reports that Lyme is on the rise, assuming they had accurate statistics which is debatable, it is time to speak out.

I live in Maine, so this PBS program is extremely alarming.  Read and/or listen here. (Reported by Tom Porter)

Maine has a strong deer-hunting community which is carefully managed and far less of a concern than other states where deer populations are out of control.

Even in Maine there is a deer population problem in urban areas where hunting is prohibited.  So imagine the states across the country where urban restrictions allow deer to thrive…and of course deer ticks are not the only way to contract Lyme disease.

Sexual transmission of Lyme disease  is hotly debated, however, Syphilis, the cousin of Lyme, is contracted primarily through sexual contact.

The Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation has published the following abstract by Dr. Gregory Bach, Do.O.P.C. from Pennsylvania back in 2001.  It begs the question of why more studies like this have been withheld from the public:

RECOVERY OF LYME SPIROCHETES BY PCR IN SEMEN SAMPLES OF PREVIOUSLY DIAGNOSED LYME DISEASE PATIENTS

Lyme disease, being a spirochete with pathology similar to syphilis, is often found difficult to treat due to the spirochete invading sanctuary sites and displaying pleo-morphic characteristics such as a cyst (L-form). Because a significant portion of sexually active couples present to my office with Lyme disease, with only one partner having a history of tick exposure, the question of possible secondary (sexual)vector of transmission for the spirochete warrants inquiry.

Additionally, sexually active couples seem to have a marked propensity for antibiotic failure raising the question of sexually active couples re-infecting themselves through intimate contact.

METHODS:

Lyme spirochetes/DNA have been recovered from stored animal semen. Recovery of spirochete DNA from nursing mother’s breast milk and umbilical cord blood by PCR (confirmed by culture/microscopy), have been found in samples provided to my office.

RESULTS:

Surprisingly, initial laboratory testing of semen samples provided by male Lyme patients (positive by western blot/PCR in blood) and the male sexual partner of a Lyme infected female patient were positive approximately 40% of the time.

PCR recovery of Lyme DNA nucleotide sequences with microscopic confirmation of semen samples yielded positive results in 14/32 Lyme patients (13 male semen samples and 1 vaginal pap).

ALL positive semen/vaginal samples in patients with known sexual partners resulted in positive Lyme titers/PCR in their sexual partners. 3/4 positive semen patients had no or unknown sexual partners to be tested. These preliminary findings warrant further study. Current a statistical design study to evaluate the possibility of sexual transition of the spirochete is being undertaken.

Our laboratory studies confirm the existence of Lyme spirochetes in semen/vaginal secretions. Whether or not further clinical studies with a larger statistical group will support the hypothesis of sexual transmission remains to be seen. A retrospective clinical study is also underway.

We are reviewing the medical records, collecting semen samples of patients who were previously diagnosed with current and previously treated Lyme disease are being asked to provide semen,pap and blood samples for extensive laboratory testing.

CONCLUSION:

With the initially impressive data, we feel the subsequent statistical sudy on the sexual transmission of the Lyme spirochete will illuminate a much broader spectrum of public health concerns associated with the disease than the originally accepted tick borne vector.”

******

Also, according to the Serano Group (www.serranogroup.org), as far back as 1986 the National Institute of Health (NIH), working with other researchers, put uninfected mice in a cage with Bb infected mice.  All of the uninfected mice had evidence of Bb infection 42 days later.

And it is well established that Bb is found in urine.  Willy Burgdorfer, the discoverer of Borrelia burgdorferi, unfortunately got Lyme borreliosis when urine from an infected rabbit splashed into his eye.  As with blood transfusions, not enough research has been done on transmission by other body fluids.

The Serano Group also reports that in April, 2001, Dr. Gregory Bach presented a paper at the International Scientific Conference on Lyme Disease showing that in 42 tested Lyme borreliosis patients, 14 had DNA evidence of Bb in semen or vaginal fluids.

It is both shocking and infuriating that this evidence is being covered up.

In closing,  I repeat my prediction that it will be the scientific researchers who will break the stranglehold of information regarding the other ways that Lyme is transmitted – including the sexual transmission – and hopefully better precautions can be made to slow the rapid spread of this horrible disease.