0 Admin: PSA To All Camp Other Google Account Users And Readers

A message from Camp Other to readers: Keep your eyes on Google and how they treat your accounts - especially if you have and use a pseudonym online connected with Google+ accounts. BEFORE: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/02/freedom-to-be-who-you-want-to-be.html "When it comes to Google services, we support three types of use: unidentified, pseudonymous and identified. And each mode has its own particular user benefits. Unidentified. Sometimes you want to use the web without having your online activity tied to your identity, or...

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9 Borrelia Infection in Ticks in Norway

ScienceDaily (June 24, 2011) — The most common tick-borne disease in humans is Lyme borreliosis. Extensive field and laboratory tests have revealed that the Borrelia bacterium is present in a larger proportion of ticks than has been shown by earlier studies. Another finding is that migratory birds play an important role in the spreading of ticks and pathogenic agents borne by ticks. READ MORE >>> Comments: The researcher working on this project, Vivian Kjelland, found a strong correlation between the spread of Borrelia bacteria and...

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7 NC Teen Develops Red Meat Allergy After Tick Bite

http://www.necn.com/07/23/11/NC-teen-develops-mysterious-meat-allergy/landing_health.html?&apID=3aca58cd7234448db6b71f59f1aae82f ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. (AP) — About a year ago, 15-year-old Andrew Treadway of Currituck got a tick bite while camping near Charlottesville, Va. The bite did not appear serious. When he returned to his Moyock home, his mom looked for the tell-tale bulls-eye rash indicating Lyme disease and the flulike symptoms from Rocky Mountain spotted fever, but all appeared normal. Little did they know that the tick bite would...

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2 Oh, Canada: Infected Ticks Found In Alberta

Just a quick FYI to my friends in Alberta, Canada: Be careful out there... Alberta issues Lyme disease warning Posted By: NCCID on July 21, 2011 Calgary Herald, July 20, 2011 Infected ticks turn up in city, Edmonton As health authorities urge Albertans to guard against Lyme disease after five infected ticks were found so far this year, a Calgary mother says she's frustrated her sick daughter hasn't been tested for the illness despite repeated requests. The pinhead-sized ticks carrying the Borrellia burgdorferi bacteria that cause Lyme disease...

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13 Lyme Disease Western Blots And Antigen Presentation

I've been thinking of this particular passage on page 504 of the book, Borrelia: Molecular Biology, Host Interaction and Pathogenesis: "The general picture to have emerged over the years is that IgG and IgM antibodies to the spirochaete develop slowly and are directed against an increasingly diverse array of proteins as infection progresses (Craft et al, 1986; Dressler et al, 1993; Nowalk et al 2006). The earliest responses are to flagellin B (FlaB) and p66, followed by OspC (25kDa) with responses to a number of additional antigens, such as VlsE,...

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19 Chicago Tribune's Dubious Writer Is At It Again...

For those who were not here when this blog started,  a reminder: This blog began because I wrote commentary in response to last December's Chicago Tribune article, "Chronic Lyme: a dubious diagnosis". I was not pleased with how the topic of Lyme disease was discussed in that article because it focused on doctors' disciplinary records and self-reported charlatans working in alternative medicine - and did not focus on science and clinical microbiology. The best of my efforts to deconstruct that article is here: http://campother.blogspot.com/2010/12/chicago-tribune-chronic-lyme-dubious.html Now,...

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0 Blog Log: Retraction Watch

Readers might be interested in the blog, Retraction Watch (it's listed on my right sidebar, too, and not just in this entry). Retraction Watch is a blog with two authors - namely Ivan Oransky, the executive editor for Reuters Health, and Adam Marcus, the managing editor for Anesthesiology News - who write about scientific papers which are fully or partially retracted from different journals. Retraction - to those uninitiated into the ways of scientific publishing - means that the authors of the paper are either found to have faulty data and/or...

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2 Looking At Camp Other Blog In A Different Way

I don't know how many of my readers are aware of this feature of  Blogger - not everyone's blog is set up this way, where you can change how you view the content. Try this link out for fun: http://campother.blogspot.com/view/flipcard (I don't know if it works on mobile; suspect it's web-only) Note that you can change the format of the blog entries listed by using the pulldown menu in the upper right corner. I think "flipcard" and "timeslide" are the two best formats, the other ones are not as interesting or useful. This work by...

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5 Google Trends On Lyme Disease

I have been having fun with this specialized search tool on Google called Trends, and also an advanced trend tool, Insights. You might want to give them a try here: http://www.google.com/trends http://www.google.com/insights In particular, I've been looking up "Lyme disease" and "Borrelia burgdorferi" and breaking down the search into different data sets by region. Check this out... Between 2005 and 2010,  of all worldwide Google searches related to Lyme disease, these were the top keyword searches made: Notice that most people worldwide...

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5 Fibroblasts And Lyme Disease: Sample Studies

One of the indications that Lyme disease may cause a persistent infection would be if it were intracellular and not just an extracellular obligate parasite. There are studies which show that Lyme disease spirochetes can be intracellular - at least in passing - in fibroblasts. Fibroblasts are important cells to study in relation to Lyme disease and other diseases. Mouse fibroblasts in cell culture Fibroblasts are the most common cells of connective tissue in animals as well as humans. Tendons, blood, cartilage, bone, adipose tissue, and lymphatic...

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0 Abstract: Interaction of Borrelia burgdorferi in coculture with human fibroblasts

I haven't seen this paper mentioned elsewhere - this is from a conference held last year. Need to find full text - not available on ASM or Scholar... Interaction of Borrelia burgdorferi in coculture with human fibroblasts  Daniel Wilfinger, Gerd Leitinger, Anna Maria Pabst, Helmut Schaider, Elisabeth Aberer Kurzfassung/Background: B. burgdorferi (B.b.) can be recovered long after initial infection from antibiotic-treated patients; a protective effect of fibroblasts was assumed. Outcome of previous studies differ whether spirochetes are...

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0 Blog Log: Spirochetes Unwound on Lymph Nodes and B cells

Quickly posting this fascinating entry on Spirochetes Unwound that you might want to read: Does Borrelia burgdorferi cause an inadequate antibody response by altering B cell activation in the lymph node? One of the characteristic features of Lyme disease is lymphadenopathy or swollen lymph nodes. It's not too surprising when a lymph node draining a site of infection swells. However when investigators looked at the lymph node draining the inoculation site of Borrelia burgdorferi in mice, they found that the spirochete had somehow altered the...

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19 Admin Update: Holiday break & Request For Topics

I've been pounding the keys pretty heavily in the past couple days on commentary, and after taking a break for a few days, I would like to get back to discussing more of the science of Lyme disease. I have some topics in the pipeline I can write about, but I'm putting out a request for feedback here: What Lyme disease and other tickborne infection topics would you like to know more about? Please leave your topics in comments - your top three choices if you have them, but one is okay, too. Thanks! This work by Camp Other is licensed under...

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9 Recap Of Dr. Zemel and Dr. Cameron Chat

ZEMEL VS. CAMERON I'm going to be posting comments here during the course of the chat, then offer additional feedback here afterwards. So far, this is off to a slow start. I don't know if it's the live chat software or if the servers are flooded with Lyme disease patients, but it's 10 minutes in and we barely have introductions. Dr. Cameron apparently wasn't logged in or having trouble logging in. Okay, now things are moving along, and questions about testing are being posted by the audience. Questions on how to test for Lyme disease and on...

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