Fibromyalgia in Patients with Culture-Confirmed Lyme Disease

It looks from this study as though Lyme and Fibromyalgia are not highly correlated, suggesting that Lyme does not cause FM, as some have speculated.

-Bob

Long-Term Assessment of Fibromyalgia in Patients with Culture-Confirmed Lyme Disease
Wormser GP, Weitzner E, McKenna D, Nadelman RB, Scavarda C, Farber S, Prakash P, Ash J, Nowakowski J.
Arthritis & Rheumatology, online first, 2014 Dec 2.

http://doi.org/10.1002/art.38972

Abstract

Background: Fibromyalgia occurs in 2% to 8% of the general population. One of the triggers may be Lyme disease.

Methods: Patients with culture-confirmed Lyme disease who originally presented with erythema migrans have been evaluated annually in a prospective study to determine their long-term outcome. In 2011-2013, subjects were evaluated for fibromyalgia by interview and tender point examination.

Results: 100 subjects were assessed, 52% of whom were male; the mean age was 64.9 years (median 64 years, range 42-86 years). The mean duration of follow-up was 15.4 years (median 16 years, range 11-20 years). At least twenty-four (24%) subjects had experienced a second episode of erythema migrans before the evaluation for fibromyalgia. One patient (1%, 95% C.I.: 0.025 to 5.4%) met criteria for fibromyalgia. The symptoms consistent with fibromyalgia began more than 19 years after Lyme disease was diagnosed.

Conclusions: Fibromyalgia was observed in only 1% of 100 patients with culture-confirmed early Lyme disease, a frequency consistent with that found for the general population.

http://doi.org/10.1002/art.38972

Tick testing company

Here's a tip for getting ticks tested for Lyme and coinfections, cheap. Saw this on a listserv today, from a naturopath:

I have been using the tic-kits.  I do have a contact person if you would like to speak to someone about it.  I have tested a few ticks with these.  They test for borrelia, bartonella, anaplasma and ehrlichia.  The test is pretty inexpensive, at $45 for all 4 infections.  I have been using the lab who sold me the kits, Pharmasan labs, for many years.  I find them reliable.  

 tic-kit.com 

Military Lyme Support group

35 messages added in the last 7 days

Group Description

Military Lyme Support® was Founded in 2002 by a USAF Spouse who found it impossible to get adequate treatment for Lyme and Co-infections at her local Military Treatment Facility. This site is a source for information and emotional support for ALL Members of the Armed Forces: Veterans, Active Duty, Reserve, Family and Caregivers. 

To date, Lyme and other vector-borne diseases are often unrecognized, misdiagnosed, and untreated. Lyme is known as the "Great Imitator" and Doctors often prefer more familiar diagnoses like GWS, FM, CFS, XMRV, Lupus, Sjogrens, MS, RA, ALS, Autism, ADHD, or Mental Illness, just to name a few. This "cook-book" diagnostic approach leaves our Members with untreated, chronic diseases that can cause complete disability.

Military Lyme Support empowers our Members to get the cutting-edge treatment they need to overcome their illnesses via the ILADS Treatment Guidelines. Doctor referrals, VA, MTF and Tricare advice is also provided.

Please Note: You can test negative multiple times, and still be infected, as the currently available tests are grossly unreliable and inaccurate. If you have a rash, you are CDC positive for Lyme Disease...even if you test negative!

DISCLAIMER: All information posted on this site is the opinion of the author(s)alone and is provided for educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as medical advice regarding the treatment of any symptoms or disease. You should obtain the medical advice of your personal physician before pursuing any treatment mentioned here.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/MilitaryLyme/info

To join: mailto:militarylyme-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Jailed for Lyme Disease. Really? Really.

Erin Zahradka Become a fan Award-winning professional photographer

 From Huff Post, Dec 4, 2014
 Posted: 12/02/2014 5:08 pm EST Updated: 12/02/2014 5:59 pm EST 
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erin-zahradka/jailed-for-lyme-diesease-_b_6257162.html
 
We've all heard this before, and many of us know it firsthand to be true. Disease is unfair, and it strikes us without warning or discretion. Yet there is one thing we have come to expect from living in the United States -- that the medical and legal systems are here to support us all equally and fairly. Sounds great in theory, but when put to the test, if you're a round peg, good luck fitting in the square hole.

Implants to stop Lyme disease??

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (Nov. 24, 2014) -- Researchers at Tufts University, in collaboration with a team at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, have demonstrated a resorbable electronic implant that eliminated bacterial infection in mice by delivering heat to infected tissue when triggered by a remote wireless signal.  The silk and magnesium devices then harmlessly dissolved in the test animals. The technique had previously been demonstrated only in vitro. The research is published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition the week of November 24-28, 2014.

"This is an important demonstration step forward for the development of  on-demand medical devices that can be turned on remotely to perform a therapeutic function in a patient and then safely disappear after their use, requiring no retrieval," said senior author Fiorenzo Omenetto, professor of biomedical engineering and Frank C. Doble professor at Tufts School of Engineering. "These wireless strategies could help manage post-surgical infection, for example, or pave the way for eventual 'wi-fi' drug delivery."

- See more at: http://now.tufts.edu/news-releases/wireless-electronic-implants-stop-staph-then-harmlessly-dissolve#sthash.v11NNMZp.dpuf

Gibson, Maloney push NY Governor Cuomo to sign Lyme bill

Click here:

 

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/health/lyme-disease/2014/12/02/gibson-maloney-cuomo-lyme-bill/19802729/

Once again, thanks to the Poughkeepsie Journal and to reporter, John Ferro, for their concern and efforts to get the Lyme bill passed.   PLEASE thank him by recommending and making a comment on the article!

 

GREAT thanks are due to our Congressmen Gibson and Maloney for bringing this critical issue to Governor Cuomo by expressing their concerns in their letter to Governor Cuomo. They also worked to get HR4701 and many other bills passed in a bipartisan manner. These two are a prime example for all of our US Congress, doing what is right for constituents and the USA! Now Governor Cuomo, it is your turn to do what is right for NYS.  NY is the Empire State, it is time to act like it and lead the way! (read this article at the link at the top)

 

As Karla Lehtonen commented:

Let's get 10,000 emails to Cuomo! For more campaign info including a flyer, sample email to friends & family, bill info, FAQ, and NY Voices of Lyme facebook link: 

http://www.nyclymesupport.org/cuomo.htm

 

Jill Auerbach
Hudson Valley Lyme Disease Association, Chairperson
NYS Coalition on Lyme and Tick-borne Disease, Member

"What's the problem? Well it's the ticks of course!"

Excerpts from interview with Willy Burgdorfer, Ph.D., Lyme disease discoverer

Watch interviews with the discoverer of the Lyme disease bacterium and how it is transported by ticks to humans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLIWSkQdCmU

Exercise and gut flora diversity are positively correlated

Being physically fit appears to be associated with a greater diversity of gut bugs, researchers found.

In a case-control study, Irish athletes had a far wider range of intestinal microbes than did matched controls who weren't athletes, Fergus Shanahan, MD, of the University College Cork in Ireland, and colleagues reported online in Gut.

"Exercise seems to be another important factor in the relationship between the microbiota, host immunity, and host metabolism, with diet playing an important role," they wrote.

There's been much attention surrounding gut microbiota and its relationship with obesity and metabolism, but few have looked specifically at the effects of exercise on these gut microbes.

Shanahan and colleagues looked at 40 professional athletes from an international rugby team while they participated in pre-season camp -- a regulated environment -- and compared them with healthy male controls from the Cork region of Ireland.

They found that athletes and controls differed with respect to plasma creatinine kinase, a marker of extreme exercise, and inflammatory and metabolic markers. Athletes had less inflammation and better metabolism than did controls, they reported.

Athletes also had a far higher diversity of gut bugs -- 22 phyla, 68 families, and 113 genera compared with just 11 phyla, 33 families and 65 genera for controls with a low body mass index (BMI), and 9 phyla, 33 families and 61 genera for controls with a high BMI.

Athletes also consumed far more protein than controls, with protein accounting for 22% of their total energy intake compared with 16% of energy intake for low-BMI controls and 15% for high-BMI controls.

This high protein intake, as well as high levels of creatinine kinase, positively correlated with bacterial diversity, suggesting that both diet and exercise are drivers of biodiversity in the gut, Shanahan and colleagues wrote.

The results provide evidence that exercise has a beneficial effect on gut microbiota diversity, they concluded, but it also indicates that the relationship is complex since it's also tied to dietary extremes -- which is why further investigation is needed into the relationship, with a particular need for intervention-based studies to tease it apart.

In an accompanying editorial, Georgina Hold, MD, of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, noted that the article is the first to report that exercise increases gut microbe diversity and that it "highlights that exercise is another important factor in the complex relationship among the host, host immunity, and the microbiota."

She added that future studies examining the impact of exercise and the nutritional value of foods in terms of relevance to gut bacteria are essential: "Developing new ways to manipulate the beneficial properties of our microbiota by finding ways to integrate health-promoting properties into modern living should be the goal."

Bartonella causing liver disease

At our Lyme support meetings, we of course often talk about our coinfection test results, and about the multi-pronged approach to treating Lyme disease, since coinfections are common in the same patient. There are  many known coinfnections that come along in the same tick, and more are being discovered all the time. Not only does the Lyme bacteria itself have three different forms (spirochete, cyst, biofilm), but there are many species of Borrelia. Then, there are the coinfections such as Bartonella, Ehrlichea, Babesia, Cytomegalvirus, EBV, HHV6, Protomyxzoa, and so on, and each of these requires a different drug or herbal regimen for effective eradication or at least reduction. Specialists often disagree over the order in which the different microbes should be attacked,  which ones prevent the others from being effectively treated. That's a big topic. But here's a little side note worth considering:

Below is an abstract of a case study (a single patient) whose liver was infected with Bartonella henselae. It was very difficult to discover the cause of the patient's pain, and then to determine that there was an infection, and that it was  Bartonella. This kind of case study makes me wonder how many bugs we all have running around unchecked in our bodies. 

It  seems to me, more and more, that the best way to get better from all these many coinfections is to do as much bolstering of our immune systems as possible. That is what my homeopath used to say to me, as she was trying (unsuccessfully) to find the right 'constitutional remedy' to reboot my immune system. I wish she had been successful. Often, unfortunately, chronic Lyme patients are so sick that their immune systems are not working correctly and just won't reboot from getting a lot of rest, eating a clean diet, removing heavy metals from the body, doing psychological work to reduce/rethink negative thought patterns that affect the immune system, and so on. 

-Bob

Granulomatous hepatitis due to Bartonella henselae infection in an immunocompetent patient

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3287964/

 

Abstract

 

Background

 

Bartonella henselae (B. henselae) is considered a rare cause of granulomatous hepatitis. Due to the fastidious growth characteristics of the bacteria, the limited sensitivity of

histopathological stains, and the non-specific histological findings on liver biopsy, the

diagnosis of hepatic bartonellosis can be difficult to establish. Furthermore, the optimal

treatment of established hepatic bartonellosis remains controversial.

 

Case presentation

 

We present a case of hepatic bartonellosis in an immunocompetent woman who presented

with right upper quadrant pain and a five cm right hepatic lobe mass on CT scan. The patient underwent a right hepatic lobectomy. Surgical pathology revealed florid necrotizing granulomatous hepatitis, favoring an infectious etiology. Despite extensive histological and serological evaluation a definitive diagnosis was not established initially. Thirteen months after initial presentation, hepatic bartonellosis was diagnosed by PCR studies from surgically excised liver tissue. Interestingly, the hepatic granulomas persisted and Bartonella henselae was isolated from the patient's enriched blood culture after several courses of antibiotic therapy.

 

Conclusion

 

The diagnosis of hepatic bartonellosis is exceedingly difficult to establish and requires a high degree of clinical suspicion. Recently developed, PCR-based approaches may be required in select patients to make the diagnosis. The optimal antimicrobial therapy for hepatic bartonellosis has not been established, and close follow-up is needed to ensure successful eradication of the infection.

 

 

NY Governor must sign Lyme bill

Editorial: Governor must sign Lyme disease bill

Friday, November 14, 2014

From The Daily Gazette

Schenectady, NY

Gazette Editorial pages

With the Polar Vortex upon us and the Ebola scare closer in the rearview mirror than it appears, right now might seem like an odd time to be talking about Lyme disease.

But the governor and the state Legislature will return to Albany soon, and on their desks is a bill that could help treat this terrible, growing tick-borne illness.

The legislation, entitled the Patients' Rights/Doctor Protection bill (S.7854/A.7558B), would enable doctors to use effective forms of long-term treatment on patients with Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses without fear of being charged with professional misconduct or loss of medical license.

We're not talking about turning our backs on legitimate medical science and allowing any quack to invent his own treatment for the disease.

We're talking about allowing government regulators to be flexible when doctors employ new, long-term antibiotic treatments to care for patients suffering from pain and chronic health problems due to long bouts with it.

The medical community is particularly wary of long-term antibiotic treatments. But such long-term treatment is sometimes necessary to fight stubborn cases of Lyme disease where short doses of antibiotics haven't worked.

The reason we should care about this bill is because Lyme disease is growing at epidemic levels. There are more than 300,000 new cases of Lyme disease in the U.S. each year, and New York has among the highest rates in the country.

The epicenter for the state is the Mid-Hudson Valley area. But cases also are prevalent in our area. In 2011, according to a Gazette report in 2013, Schenectady County reported 79 cases of Lyme Disease; Schoharie County, 29; Saratoga County, 525; Rensselaer County, 656; Montgomery County, 30; Fulton County, 8; and Albany County, 364.

The number of confirmed cases has grown exponentially during the past two decades and is expected to continue to grow at an alarming rate.

And just because it's getting cold out doesn't mean the threat is over. While they're generally active during the spring and summer, disease-spreading ticks can still be prevalent through Thanksgiving and can even be a threat in winter.

The state and individual counties have information about ticks and Lyme Disease on their websites. so visit them for more information about how to prevent, identify and treat the disease.

But for people who already suffer from it, and for whom short-term antibiotic treatments didn't cure them, it's imperative that the state give them relief.

The bill has already passed both houses of the Legislature. The governor now needs to sign it and let doctors do what's necessary.

The source:

 http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2014/nov/14/1114_editlyme/