Bad news first? Mistakes were made counting Lyme disease cases. Big mistakes. According to the CDC, its previously reported numbers were short by a factor of 10. The more accurate total is 300,000 new cases of Lyme disease per year.
More bad news? In multiple studies, antibiotics typically used to treat Lyme disease have been proven to not eradicate all of the Lyme bacteria in animals. More recently, these same antibiotics, doxycycline and amoxicillin, were also proven to be unable to kill all of the Lyme bacteria in the lab.
In other words, people treated for Lyme disease based on the Infectious Diseases Society of America treatment guidelines may continue to suffer from symptoms caused by an active infection.... PLEASE read the remainder of article at link below.
At the end of the article if you read the whole thing, it is claimed that this is to be published in the prestigious science journal, Nature. -Bob PUBLIC RELEASE: Missing link found between brain, immune system -- with major disease implications
Implications profound for neurological diseases from autism to Alzheimer's to multiple sclerosis
IMAGE: MAPS OF THE LYMPHATIC SYSTEM: OLD (LEFT) AND UPDATED TO REFLECT UVA'S DISCOVERY. view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA HEALTH SYSTEM
Vessels directly connecting brain, lymphatic system exist despite decades of doctrine that they don't
Finding may have substantial implications for major neurological diseases
Game-changing discovery opens new areas of research, transforms existing ones
Major gap in understanding of the human body revealed
'They'll have to change the textbooks'
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., June 1, 2015 - In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist. That such vessels could have escaped detection when the lymphatic system has been so thoroughly mapped throughout the body is surprising on its own, but the true significance of the discovery lies in the effects it could have on the study and treatment of neurological diseases ranging from autism to Alzheimer's disease to multiple sclerosis.
"Instead of asking, 'How do we study the immune response of the brain?' 'Why do multiple sclerosis patients have the immune attacks?' now we can approach this mechanistically. Because the brain is like every other tissue connected to the peripheral immune system through meningeal lymphatic vessels," said Jonathan Kipnis, PhD, professor in the UVA Department of Neuroscience and director of UVA's Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG). "It changes entirely the way we perceive the neuro-immune interaction. We always perceived it before as something esoteric that can't be studied. But now we can ask mechanistic questions."
"We believe that for every neurological disease that has an immune component to it, these vessels may play a major role," Kipnis said. "Hard to imagine that these vessels would not be involved in a [neurological] disease with an immune component."
The Poughkeepsie Journal looks at how the IDSA has excluded patients from its Lyme guidelines review. This process will profoundly affect people with Lyme for years to come--and they don't have a voice.
