There are many items
dealing with Lyme Disease. Movies / documentaries showing the horrors of
living with Lyme Disease, Doctor's speaking out trying to help Lyme Disease
sufferer's, news paper articles about Lyme, reports showing Lyme Disease
is transferred by more than just ticks and more. Check out the articles
and links on this page and learn more about the Lyme Disease fight and
how it effects thousands and thousands of people.
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IDSA panel violates agreement
with AG; Blumenthal asks for a re-do of vote:
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In a four-page
letter to the IDSA sent February 1, 2010, Connecticut Attorney General
Richard Blumenthal expressed concern over "improper voting procedures"
used by the IDSA in the Lyme guidelines review voting process. The AG asked
the Lyme panel to re-do its voting in compliance with the agreement.
What happened? The way
the IDSA panel voted on the guidelines blatantly violated the group's Settlement
Agreement with the Attorney General. The IDSA manipulated the voting process
to favor NO change in the guidelines. Click for the Lyme Policy Wonk's
further explanation of what happened, and to see the text of the AG's letter
and the IDSA's internal memo which confirmed its understanding of the required
voting procedure. |
To see the full story,
click on the link below:
http://www.lymedisease.org/news/index.php
Action alert from LDA,
Time for Lyme and CALDA
If you live in Connecticut,
please e-mail and thank Richard Blumenthal for investigating the IDSA and
for enforcing the settlement agreement. Our health is at risk and
we thank him for trying to protect it. Your letter might read:
"I want to thank you for investigating the IDSA and enforcing the settlement
agreement. Patients with Lyme rely on your broad-shoulders!"
Your subject should read "IDSA Lyme Disease Guidlines"
To contact CT Attorney
General Blumenthal: attorney.general@po.state.ct.us
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Government Study=No cure
for Lyme Disease
Antibiotic treatment
during the early stage of infection appeared to be more effective than
treatment that began during later stages of infection.
These results extended
previous studies with ceftriaxone, indicating that antibiotic treatment
is unable to clear persisting spirochetes, which remain viable and infectious,
but are nondividing or slowly dividing.
PMID: 19995919 [PubMed
- in process]
See link below
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19995919?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=1
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New Yale Study
The range of Lyme disease
is spreading in North America and it appears that birds play a significant
role by transporting the Lyme disease bacterium over long distances, a
new study by the Yale School of Public Health has found.
Click on the link
below to read the entire article.
http://www.lymedisease.org/news/lyme_disease_views/293.html
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Check out the link below
to the newest
movie / documentary
about Lyme Disease.
http://www.undertheeightball.com/
This documentary is about
producer Timothy Grey's sister and her battle with Lyme disease.
It documents all the miss-diagnosis she goes through, how the disease debilitates
her and finally her death. One Dr. even told her when they didn't
know what was wrong "everybody dies".
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Dr. Joe Jemsek (www.jemsekspecialty.com)
discusses the controversy
surrounding Lyme Disease
and what action needs to be taken to provide
patients with better
care. Below is the you tube link of the discussion.
http://www.youtube.
com/watch? v=V-lHDA863TM
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July 26, 2009
CT Law Approved To Protect
Lyme Doctors
There's been a surge of
encouraging momentum and positive developments building recently for patients
suffering from chronic Lyme disease, and for the doctors who treat them.
Signaling what many hope is a harbinger of commonsense legislative action
that will eventually sweep across the country, Connecticut Governor M.
Jodi Rell last month signed into law a bill that allows physicians to prescribe
long-term antibiotics in the treatment of persistent Lyme disease.
House Bill 6200 unanimously
passed through both sides of the Connecticut General Assembly. The bill
allows doctors to treat for Lyme disease outside standard guidelines, which
were established by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and recommend
against treating Lyme disease more than a few weeks.
The IDSA guidelines, however,
have come under intense fire. In May, the Connecticut Attorney General
found that the panel responsible for writing the Lyme guidelines had conflicts
of interest, engaged in exclusionary conduct, and suppressed scientific
evidence. The Attorney General's investigation resulted in a settlement
forcing the IDSA to form a new panel to review and revise the guidelines.
That process is ongoing, however, and doctors across the country who currently
treat long term for chronic Lyme still do so at great risk to their medical
licenses.
In that light, the legislation
recently approved and signed into law by Gov. Rell in Connecticut comes
as welcome news. The bill allows doctors to prescribe long-term antibiotics
as a way to treat patients with Lyme disease, if a licensed physician has
documented the patient's clinical diagnosis of the disease and treatment.
The bill also prevents the state health department from taking disciplinary
action against any physician who prescribes long-term antibiotics to Lyme
patients.
"This is positive step
forward in bringing the possibility for renewed health to chronic Lyme
patients who have suffered terribly under the flawed guidelines issued
by the IDSA," said Dr. Joseph Jemsek, a infectious disease specialist who
two years ago was disciplined by the North Carolina Medical Board, for
treating Lyme patients outside the IDSA guidelines. The medical board's
ruling was immediately stayed, and Dr. Jemsek continues to successfully
treat Lyme patients from across the country and the globe, from his clinic
in Fort Mill, SC.
"It is my sincere hope
that doctors everywhere will one day be able to enjoy the same protections
now afforded physicians in Connecticut," Dr. Jemsek said, "to provide chronic
Lyme patients with the best possible care."
Gov. Rell shared those
sentiments.
"Doctors in Connecticut
- the absolute epicenter of Lyme disease - can continue to do what is best
for their patients suffering from this complex illness," Gov. Rell said.
"I think most people know someone who has been infected. The bill also
recognizes that Lyme disease patients must have the freedom to choose which
remedy or regimen best meets their needs.
"Doctors will have the
right to use treatment guidelines based on their clinical experience and
best medical judgment," she said. "This bill does not, however, shield
any physician who provides substandard care."
The newly approved legislation
is already drawing high praise from Lyme advocates and patients' rights
groups across the nation.
"Justice has been served,"
Pat Smith, president of the national Lyme Disease Association, told Connecticut's
Wilton Villager newspaper. "Human health has finally triumphed over vested
interest in the Lyme capital of the world. Lyme patients and treating physicians
in Connecticut can breathe a collective sigh of relief. For years, they
have not only been battling the disease, but also battling the politics
which have prevented patients from getting treatment and physicians from
treating. Gov. Rell and the Legislature have come down on the side of the
people."
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Below is the link, then
the article. This article is about dealing with L-form bacteria.
Note the first highlighted box and the bacteria company Lyme Disease keeps.
http://media.www.jhunewsletter.com/media/storage/paper932/news/2009/11/05/
ScienceTech/Bacterial.Antibiotic.Resistance.Genes.Discovered-3824803.shtml
Bacterial antibiotic resistance
genes discovered
By Aleena Lakhanpal
Issue date: 11/5/09
Antibacterial soap, hand
sanitizer and antibiotics are all substances that we use in an attempt
to kill bacteria that
might make us sick.Whether we are concerned about getting strep throat,
bacterial meningitis or something else, these prevention methods can offer
protection.
However, some bacteria,
such as those that cause Staph and MRSA infections, are becoming increasingly
resistant to antibiotics. Since the 1930s, researchers have been aware
that bacteria may be able to resist treatment because they can morph into
the L-form, or bacteria
lacking cell walls.
Until the 1980s, not much
else could be known about the L-form, but now, researchers at the Bloomberg
School of Public Health have used a wide variety of modern molecular tools
to learn more about the origin and biological functions of the L-form bacteria.
Ying Zhang, a professor
of molecular microbiology and immunology at Bloomberg, is the senior author
of the study, which was published in PLoS ONE last month.
Not all bacteria can transform
into the L-form, but those that can include Bacillus anthracis (anthrax),
Treponema pallidum (syphilis), Mycobacterium tuberculosis (tuberculosis),
Heliobacter pylori (stomach ulcers and cancer), Borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme
disease) and Escherichia coli (food poisoning). Zhang's team used E. coli
to create a culture of L-form bacteria.
Although it had been difficult
to culture L-form bacteria before, Zhang and his team created a new method
that more closely simulated the in vivo conditions in which these bacteria
form.
"The presence of antibiotic
stress is cell wall inhibiting, like penicillin," Zhang said. To prevent
the
cells from bursting because
of this increased stress, Zhang's team added sucrose to the cell media.
This culture represented
the mechanism that occurs in the body. "L forms are formed in response
to stress," Zhang said.
"They have a different mode of survival and replication from classical
bacteria." The cell wall-deficient bacteria cluster together in the shape
of a fried egg rather than the smooth, homogeneous appearance of wild-type
bacteria cultures.
Not only
are L-form bacteria difficult to culture and therefore study, but this
"fried egg" cluster is part of what makes the L-form bacteria resistant
to antibiotics, in addition to the fact that they do not have cell walls
for commonly used antibiotics to disintegrate.
Once Zhang and his team
were able to successfully culture L-form E. coli, they screened for and
identified mutants that fail to grow at the L-form. From these mutants,
they were able to discover a series of genes that were linked with the
inability to grow in the L-form.
"These fall into four
to five different categories involving extracellular matrix synthesis,
membrane proteins, membrane biogenesis, DNA repair as well as iron metabolism
and energy metabolism," Zhang said.
Their identification of
these genes and their effect on L-form bacterial expression is a resounding
discovery because it was impossible to do before, what with the difficulty
of culturing the L-forms
of various bacteria.
Zhang noted, however, that although his team managed to create and study
a culture of L-form bacteria, their study cannot be universal.
"What we can culture is
only a small percentage - probably less than 1 percent - of all bacteria
on earth," Zhang said.
"They exist in nature
and grow easily, but we're limited to what we can grow and the form of
bacteria that can grow.
Bacteria can grow a variety of different forms even for the same species,
and can change forms
under different conditions. L-forms are one example of changing under antibiotic
stress."
These L-forms
of various bacteria may be the underlying reason for chronic resistant
and recurring diseases, such as sarcoidosis, various forms of inflammatory
bowel diseases and rheumatoid arthritis. Zhang is confident that there
will be many
practical
applications of this discovery.
"It is possible, with
our discovery of the L-form genes to develop new antibiotics and
more
effective ones that can
be used with current ones as well as new vaccines to . . . allow these
forms to be eliminated
by the immune system," he said.
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Below is an older but
still very interesting CDC link showing Lyme Disease is not just transmitted
by ticks. It can be transmitted by Ticks, Fleas and Mosquitos.
Per
The CDC, Lyme Disease Is The Most Common Of All The Diseases In
The
United States, Transmitted By Mosquitoes, Fleas And Ticks.
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Copyright 2008-2011 . CT. Lyme Riders. All rights
reserved.
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