2 Anonymous Comments On Chronic Lyme Disease

Last year someone who identified only as "anonx" wrote some interesting comments on last January's blog post on quorum sensing, "How bacteria "talk" and how to make them shut up". (There is a fascinating video there by researcher Bonnie Bassler. I highly recommend checking it out.) To my knowledge, comments on Blogger do not get syndicated on post rss feeds - though one can request rss comments separately. I think that anonx's comments are worth taking another look, so I have decided to repost select excerpts of them here. (Refer back to the...

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1 Multicenter Clinical Study To Test For Babesia In Blood Supply

This just released in the press by the Red Cross: The American Red Cross is participating in a multi-center clinical study sponsored by IMUGEN, Inc. to help improve the safety of the nation’s blood supply. This study will test the blood supply for evidence of a tick-borne organism, Babesia microti, by investigational test methods developed by IMUGEN. It will be conducted under Imugen’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Investigational New Drug Application (IND) and will include the testing of more than 26,000 blood donor specimens...

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2 Wormser et al Criticism Launched at Embers' Rhesus Macaque Study

Wormser et al have recently published a critique of Embers' study, "Persistence of Borrelia burgdorferi in Rhesus Macaques following Antibiotic Treatment of Disseminated Infection". Vector Borne Zoonotic Dis. 2012 May 23. [Epub ahead of print] Critical Analysis of Treatment Trials of Rhesus Macaques Infected with Borrelia burgdorferi Reveals Important Flaws in Experimental Design. Wormser GP, Baker PJ, O'Connell S, Pachner AR, Schwartz I, Shapiro ED. Abstract A critical analysis of two treatment trials of Chinese rhesus macaques infected...

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23 Let's Not Be Rash About Erythema Migrans

On May 21, Skidmore College in New York conducted the Lyme Next Forum in which various doctors, researchers, patient advocates, and Lyme disease organization leaders gave presentations on various topics related to Lyme disease and its coinfections. (All presentations in four parts can be viewed as streaming videos on Joanne's Looking at Lyme blog.) While different presentations may have grabbed the attention of other patients, one presentation which stood out for me early on was Holly Ahern's presentation. Holly is an associate professor at...

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0 Commentary: 20/20 And Needing A New Focus For Lyme Disease

This past Friday, the ABC program, 20/20, aired a show on medical mysteries. Included in this show were segments on people who fly into a rage at certain sounds (misophonia), eat rocks or other unusual non-food items (pica), and one on a girl with Lyme disease who is speculated by doctors to have developed a condition known as foreign accent syndrome (FAS) due to being coinfected with Bartonella. While I have sympathy for everyone dealing with such conditions and hope everyone who was interviewed for the show gets better, what I'm about to...

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3 "Time For Lyme" Becomes "Lyme Research Alliance"

Just recently, the Lyme disease advocacy group, Time For Lyme - which is credited with creating a partnership with Columbia University Medical Center and the national Lyme Disease Association to establish and endow a Lyme and Tick-borne Disease Research Center in New York City at Columbia - changed its name to the "Lyme Research Alliance". The name change came about as an effort to reflect the organization's growing emphasis on supporting more research into chronic Lyme disease and how to improve serological testing and treatment. See this...

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10 Commentary On Chronic Lyme Disease and Skepticism

When I began writing this blog, I originally wrote it to give a point-by-point analysis of how one article in the Chicago Tribune, "Chronic Lyme: A dubious diagnosis", did not address the issue of whether or not Lyme disease could be a chronic and persistent infection after initial or delayed antibiotic treatment. I wrote the analysis using Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit, because I thought it was a good framework for deconstruction of the article. I thought this analysis would attract the attention of a number of skeptics, and from there,...

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0 Female Pheromones and Infection May Affect Tick Behavior

Image: Researcher drags white flannel to collect questing ticks.  Recently I came across an abstract for the paper, "The correlation between tick (Ixodes persulcatus Sch.) questing behaviour and synganglion neuronal responses to odours". I'm looking forward to reading the full text, as the abstract demonstrates two findings on tick behavior which may reveal who is more likely to be bitten by ticks. In this experiment, the taiga tick or Ixodes persulcatus is used - a tick common in parts of Russia. It is unknown if other Ixodes ticks...

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1 Abstract: Delays and Diversions Mark the Development of B Cell Responses to Bb Infection

Another insightful paper on the immune response to infection with Borrelia burgdorferi has been published. "Delays and Diversions Mark the Development of B Cell Responses to Borrelia burgdorferi Infection" by Hastey et al is closely related to previous research completed by Tunev et al on the immune response found in murine lymph nodes which were invaded by Borrelia burgdorferi. A well-written blog article on Tunev et al's previous research on B cells and plasma cells and their associated (lack of) T cell response in reaction to Bb infection...

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