All Posts Tagged With: "virulent"

Virulent Lyme Strain Spreads Through US and Europe

OspC Type A Lyme ProteinA virulent and nasty strain of Lyme disease is spreading fast. Not just in the USA, but also in Europe. This strain, known as “OspC type A” Lyme disease, can also adapt to new environements and be carried in varied hosts, much more effectively and easily than other types of Lyme disease.

Finally, researchers are catching on to the severity of Lyme disease in modern times. Here is a portion of the article from WebMD:

A virulent strain of Lyme disease germ is spreading in the U.S. and in Europe a new study shows.

June 9, 2008 — A virulent strain of Lyme disease germ is spreading in the U.S. and in Europe, a new study shows.
 
It’s not a new strain of Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochete bacterium that causes Lyme disease. In fact, it was one of the first strains ever identified — found in the cerebrospinal fluid of a patient with severe Lyme meningitis.
 
But now Wei-Gang Qiu, PhD, Benjamin Luft, MD, and colleagues find that the particularly nasty ospC type A strain appears to be the most common of the 20 or so B. burgdorferi strains found in the U.S. The spread of this virulent strain, they suggest, could be part of the reason for the increase in Lyme cases seen over the past two decades.
 
“OspC type A is the type most widely distributed in the U.S. — and, as others have shown, this is the most virulent strain,” Qiu, an assistant professor at New York’s Hunter College, tells WebMD. “If this is widespread, it is not good. You do not want to see this thing increase.” …
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