More information on the study is available here. James FM, Engiles JB, Beech J., Meningitis, cranial neuritis, and radiculoneuritis associated with Borrelia burgdorferi infection in a horse. J Am Vet Med Assoc. 2010 Nov 15;237(10):1180-5.
The LYME POLICY WONK blog and HARD SCIENCE ON LYME is written by Lorraine Johnson, JD, MBA, who is CALDA’s Chief Executive Officer. Contact her at lbjohnson@lymedisease.org.
It took four years of warnings from advocacy groups, physicians, and scientists (including the lead investigator), pleas and protests to the FDA, hundreds of adverse events and a class action lawsuit to get rid of the first ill-conceived Lyme vaccine. Will we have to get rid of the new one, too?
The first sign of Lyme disease may be a non-specific ‘flu-like illness with fever, headache, stiff neck and muscle aches and pains several weeks or even months after the nymphal tick season in your area.
A new article has resurrected the old myth about disease transmission being impossible before a certain time after the tick bites. In the New Haven (CT) Register this week, Dr. David Katz writes: “Ticks need to be embedded for 24 hours or more to transmit Lyme.” This is an improvement on the usual 36-48-hour minimum we usually see, but it is still misleading. See the science and judge for yourself.
David Leiby, of the Red Cross, has declared the risk of blood transfusion for Babesia microti to be unacceptably high. Babesia microti is a coinfection of Lyme disease that is transmitted primarily by ticks. Over the past 30 years, between 70-100 cases of transfusion transmitted Babesia have been reported, with at least 12 fatalities. Although the need to screen for the parasite which lives in red blood cells is now recognized as urgent, the method of screening blood has yet to be determined and several obstacles remain before screening practices are adopted. However, according the Leiby, failure to screen is "no longer a viable alternative". The abstract to the article follows the jump. . .
Breathe a sigh of relief. No, really. It is not that often in Lyme disease that one reads an unbiased study that speaks truth to power, that values integrity in science over dogma. So, pour a cup of tea and I will pull out the most important findings and conclusions about persistence from the recently published study by Dr. Stephen Barthold and Dr. Ben Luft, “Ineffectiveness of Tigecycline against Persistent Borrelia burgdorferi.” Here they are in a nut-shell for those with neither the time nor the inclination to read the entire study (though I must say it is highly recommended!).
In this guest blog, pathologist Alan MacDonald describes the struggle to publish the discovery of Borrelia biofilms and what the existence of these biofilms means for chronicity and treatment.
