Aspenn Alerts

New York University professor argues Health Agencies need better Tick Control Tactics
Thursday, October 11, 2012 - 13:28

New York University recently posted a controversial article; arguing that U.S. Health Agencies are actively suppressing the true extent of tick borne illnesses.

Animals and wildlife are an inexorable part of the Lyme disease cycle. Although the disease infects humans – and, in fact, is one of the fastest-growing infectious diseases in America today – the bacterium which causes Lyme disease requires interaction with a number of other animals first, before it’s likely to ever become part of the chain of human infection.

Which is where, New York University sociologist Colin Jerolmack argues, U.S. Health Agencies fall short in their role of identifying and preventing the causes of illnesses like Lyme disease.

After conducting an analysis of many different U.S. Health Agencies, he identified that too many of them were “siloed” between human and animal illnesses – failing to communicate which each other, and therefore exacerbating the risk posed by diseases that can be spread by animals to humans.

Examples he gave included bird flu strains, often transmitted to cattle and livestock....

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When will the CDC admit that deer ticks are widespread?
Monday, October 8, 2012 - 11:36

A recent article in Kentucky.com confirms what many believe – but the CDC still deny: That Lyme disease-carrying deer ticks are more widespread than people realize.

“I can tell you, from personal experience, that Lyme disease is already a problem in Kentucky and has been for many years,” writes Russell L. Croley, in his article for Kentucky.com Lyme disease, deer ticks no longer rare in Kentucky. “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and, therefore, the medical community at large, has stubbornly, at least until recently, refused to acknowledge a growing epidemic that is spread by the so-called deer tick.”

But Russell knows firsthand that the CDC is wrong on this issue – after all, he was struck down with Lyme disease in 2006, despite living in a “Lyme free” state.

“I suddenly experienced a fever of more than 104 degrees that rapidly oscillated from almost unbearable perspiring heat to trembling chills to which no blanket could bring comfort. No aches, no pains, no sneezing, no coughing — nothing except a fever that I can only describe as horrifically violent, coupled with debilitating, unrelenting fatigue.”

But that wasn’t the worst...

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More Proof that Chronic Lyme Disease Exists
Thursday, October 4, 2012 - 10:32

At the 15th European Microscopy Congress in Manchester, England, scientists presented a paper suggesting that borrelia burgdorferi – the bacterium which causes Lyme disease – really can ‘come back from the dead’ like Lyme advocates have argued.

The existence – or not – of Chronic Lyme disease continues to be a controversial issue. The medical mainstream argues that treatment-resistant Lyme disease simply does not exist, and that patients who suffer ongoing Lyme-like symptoms even after being treated are either suffering from a delayed onset immune system reaction or – most offensively – simply faking it.

But now scientists have made an important breakthrough which suggests Lyme disease can return even after being “cured” – as many Lyme advocates have long argued.

Professions Leandro Lemgruber, Christiane Brenner, Misha Kudryashev, Yuri Abud, Celso Sant’Anna, Reinhard Wallich and Freddy Frischknecht – all experts in infectious diseases and parasitology, have discovered the mechanism of “bacterial survival” that the borrelia burgdorferi bacterium uses to survive even prolonged antibiotic treatment.

In their paper ...

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16 Years with Lyme Disease – a Chilling Tick Control Warning
Friday, September 28, 2012 - 13:10

Almost two decades without diagnosis have had a lasting impact on one boy’s life.

The infection happened when he was six, Nancy Baker believes. Her son, Danny, used to curl up in bed with the family beagle and she believes that’s how a tick found its way onto her son. She pulled it from where it had embedded itself, behind his ear, and thought no more about it.

But as Nancy explained to the Mountain Democrat, that was not the end of her family’s tick-related tale. A few years later, the formerly gregarious young Danny started complaining of joint pain and stomach aches, and his hands sweated uncontrollably.

At college, he was struck with mono – and couldn’t seem to shake it. Later, he began vomiting blood and suffering so much he had to drop out of school. It was only then – 16 years after than initial tick bite – that a specialist finally discovered that Danny was infected with the borrelia burgdorferi bacterium which causes Lyme disease.

“Thank God we finally have the name of the monster that is making my son vomit every day,” Nancy remembers thinking.

This chilling tale teaches us several lessons. Firstly, how long-term, undiagnosed and untreated Lyme...

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Could thousands of American kids be living with Lyme disease?
Monday, September 24, 2012 - 21:08

Thousands of American children could be living with Lyme disease – yet diagnosed with something else.

Dr. Roberta L. DeBiasi, of the Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, recently told The Family Practice News that: “We see tons of kids with Lyme arthritis. We get two or three cases every week in our clinic.”

She’s one of the first doctors to reveal what might be a growing medical controversy – literally thousands of children living with advanced or late-stage Lyme disease.

Lyme disease is tricky enough to diagnose as it is; known as “the great imitator,” it has symptoms that mirror a lot of regular diseases and auto immune conditions. Yet combine that with natural skepticism of younger patients and you’re creating a prescription for disaster.

DeBiasi, along with other doctors, are discovering that what some medical practitioners dismiss as sports injuries or sprains in kids and adolescents are often actually symptoms of infection with the borrelia burgdorferi bacterium – the spirochete that causes Lyme disease.
Misdiagnosis leaves patients...

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Could Bed Bugs be Spreading Lyme Disease?
Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - 20:09

Ticks are the best known vector for Lyme disease – but could be bugs spread the disease too?

Online medical forum site MDJunction.com recently published an interesting story – a honeymooner in Hawaii convinced that she’d been infected with Lyme disease by bed bugs.

Calling herself Nauni, she wrote: “I noticed bites all over my legs. My son-in-law said the pattern looked like bed bugs.” Later, she experienced: “extreme fatigue. I could barely lift my legs to walk and keep my eyes open. I was in so much pain I went to stand up and I cried out in agony.”

After months of torment, she took a blood test for Lyme disease; which came up negative. But based on her symptoms, her doctor wasn’t quick to rule out infection with Lyme-causing b. burgdorferi.

We’ve already written about how unreliable Lyme disease testing can be, so it’s entirely possible she’s been infected with the disease – but the question is: How?

Nauni had not been bitten by a tick; so her first conclusion was that it was related to the bites she’d received in Hawaii. This contradicts the mainstream thinking on...

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Could Lyme Disease Damage your Eyesight?
Monday, September 17, 2012 - 09:25

Could Lyme disease damage patient’s eyesight? A new report suggests so.

As doctors learn more about the borrelia burgdorferi bacterium which causes Lyme disease, the more worrying the illness seems. Far from causing “just” joint pains and arthritis, it’s becoming more apparent that this insidious spirochete attacks the whole body; including the brain and heart.

Now, scientists from the Department of Ophthalmology at Raigmore Hospital in Scotland have begun to uncover evidence that b. burgdorferi can lead to serious eyesight problems as well.

They studied two patients with unexplained eyesight issues – a 48-year-old with hemorrhages in his right eye, and a 79-year-old man whose optic disc was swollen. After intensive study – which failed to uncover the cause of these seemingly unrelated conditions – an unexpected link was found between the two when they both tested positive for Lyme disease.

Even more astonishingly, after treatment with a two week course of intravenous ceftriaxone, both patients’ eyesight improved – with the first patient’s vision returning to normal entirely. In their case report Papillitis as...

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Could vaccinating mice be the key to tick control?
Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 06:52

Required reading at Tree and Lawn Care is Richard Ostfeld’s book Lyme Disease: The Ecology of a Complex System,which we’ve discussed before. Now it looks like tick control experts in Boston are taking this research seriously; and have published a paper investigating the viability of vaccinating what they believe are the true vectors of Lyme disease.

Doctors Mekki Bensacia, Debaditya Bhattacharyaa, Roger Clarka, and Linden T. Hu – of the Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Tufts Medical Center, Boston – recently published a stunning paper entitled Oral vaccination with vaccinia virus expressing the tick antigen subolesin inhibits tick feeding and transmission of Borrelia burgdorferi vaccination.

In it, they outlined their experiments vaccinating mice against the bacteria which causes Lyme disease, using a protein...

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Could Legislation Bring Tick Control and Lyme Disease to the Public Eye?
Wednesday, August 22, 2012 - 07:38

“What if you had a disease nobody believed in? That’s the reality faced by those with Chronic Lyme Disease.” So says a recent news report about combatting Chronic Lyme Disease in Connecticut.

Chronic Lyme Disease is the controversial name for ongoing, Lyme-like symptoms in patients previously treated for, or never actually diagnosed with, Lyme disease. It’s a debilitating condition that Lyme advocates argue proves that Lyme disease can’t simply be eliminated with two weeks of antibiotics.

And now, Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut has become the latest ally in the war against Lyme disease – sponsoring a bill to create a Lyme advisory committee in Washington D.C. to investigate the severity and impact of so-called Chronic Lyme Disease; and how best to tackle it.

Notably, Senator Blumenthal’s bill calls for patients to weigh in on the issue as well as physicians; which is a controversial measure, but one welcomed by Lyme advocates. One of the things they argue most vehemently about is the belief that the “medical mainstream” are deliberately downplaying the severity of Lyme disease, in order to protect insurance companies and hide the true impact of the disease.


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Study finds Lyme disease could be 800% underreported in Tennessee
Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - 14:57

Could using medical claims, rather than reported infections, show a more accurate picture of Lyme disease infection?

Doctors Stephen G Jones, Steven Coulter and William Conner recently published a controversial new paper entitled Using administrative medical claims data to supplement state disease registry systems for reporting zoonotic infections. In it, they decided to investigate if there was any benefit to basing the “official” Lyme disease figures for a state on administrative medical claims, rather than the Lyme disease cases reported to the CDC by physicians.

Early indications would appear to be “yes” – as this approach has been nothing short of revolutionary in getting a better understanding of tick-borne illnesses in the trial state, Tennessee.

Using this system, researchers discovered that the “real” Lyme disease figures in Tennessee were actually 7.7 times higher than those reported by doctors – and they also uncovered three cases of infection with tick-borne babesia that had previously not been reported.

Nationwide, this could potentially revolutionize our understanding of the spread of Lyme disease and other tick borne illnesses;...

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