All Posts Tagged With: "antibiotics"

Linda’s comments:  Tick population exploding isn’t just on the East coast, it is US wide.  More and more ER’s are reporting a BIG increase with tick bites.   More importantly, you don’t have to have a tick bite to get Lyme disease.  BEWARE and pay attention when in the great outdoors.

Full article: http://www.newburyportnews.com/punews/local_story_099222830.html

Excerpt:

NEWBURYPORT — Deer ticks have been appearing in huge numbers throughout the region, raising concerns about Lyme disease.

All along the East Coast, health experts have seen a sudden and dramatic increase in ticks.

“Just in the past week or two, we have seen an explosion in deer ticks,” said Dr. Heidi Bassler, medical director of the Veterinary Center of Greater Newburyport.

The unusually warm weather and record-setting rains have helped bolster the tick population. Hospitals, such as Addison-Gilbert in Gloucester, have experienced a surge in tick bite cases. Normally, the hospital sees one or two cases per day; now it is seeing eight or 10.

There are two different kinds of ticks that are predominant in the region. Dog ticks are about the size of a pencil eraser; deer ticks, the more dangerous species, are closer to the size of a pen point.

With a single bite, deer ticks can transmit Lyme disease, symptoms of which include a debilitating complex of fever, headache, fatigue and depression, and two other illnesses of similar symptoms.

Ticks are mostly found in woods and fields. High grass, including dune grass, is one of their favored habitats.

Linda’s comment:  Misdiagnosing Lyme disease for MS is a very common thing these days,  It isn’t jut happening in Canada, it is happening world-wide. We must bring education and awareness to this serious matter.  When ignored patients are becoming sicker and sicker.  Lyme is best diagnosed clinically, as there are not that many Lyme blood tests that are accurate.  Most doctors now realize, when in doubt treat for Lyme.

Full article: http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/Doctors+misdiagnose+Lyme+disease+researcher/2908675/story.html

Excerpt:

A Manitoba researcher says some patients deemed by doctors to suffer from multiple sclerosis may be misdiagnosed.

In a recent thesis, Winnipeg researcher Kathleen Crang found that some Manitobans diagnosed with MS and other chronic conditions may actually be suffering from the borrelia bacteria, a tick-borne “biological evil genius” that causes Lyme disease.

“If I knew someone with MS, I’d be saying, ‘Let’s look at those questions,’ ” said Crang. “If their MS is coupled with heart problems, or skin rashes, or rheumatological involvement, there might be some question as to why.”

After all, the bug is dubbed “the second great imitator” — syphilis is the first.

Tests for Lyme disease can be unreliable; many of the disease’s 75 known symptoms are shared by a host of neurological conditions. Case studies have even found that Lyme can produce lesions on the brain like those seen in MS.

That in itself isn’t breaking news. Crang’s thesis, titled Knowledge and Perception of Lyme disease in Manitoba: Implications for Risk Assessment, found numerous reports in Europe and the United States of Lyme disease being initially misdiagnosed as everything from MS to ALS and fibromyalgia.

But in Manitoba, where Lyme is thought to be almost non-existent, Crang found that doctors may not be on the lookout for the disease.

Could that lack of concern lead to lasting misdiagnoses?

“There’s a bit of a disconnect there,” said Crang. “It’s an information-flow problem. The fact that individuals are hearing such low numbers of Lyme leads to a perception that Lyme isn’t there.”

In a series of interviews for the thesis, Crang found that many Manitoba public health decision-makers and clinicians didn’t perceive Lyme as a threat to Manitobans, and “did not expect they would see patients with the disease.”

Crang, 44, is living proof that the mistake can be made.

In 1999, doctors told the Fort Richmond Collegiate science teacher that she had MS; an MRI appeared to confirm the diagnosis.

Excerpt:

November 13, 2009 (Washington, DC) — The odds that a child living in a Lyme-endemic area of the United States who presents with a joint effusion will be diagnosed as having Lyme arthritis is 29%. The odds are even higher (44%) if the affected joint is the knee. The leukocyte count is useful in distinguishing between septic and Lyme arthritis, researchers announced here.

“There was an increase in the number of cases in the United States by 101% over the past 15 years, possibly due to increased recognition of Lyme disease,” said Aristides I. Cruz Jr., MD, resident in the Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. During his presentation, he noted that 93% of all Lyme disease cases arise from 10 states, most in the Northeast United States.

Excerpt:

A minor-league pitcher in his younger days, Richard Armbruster kept playing baseball recreationally into his 70s, until his right hip started bothering him. Last February he went to a St. Louis hospital for what was to be a routine hip replacement.

By late March, Mr. Armbruster, then 78, was dead. After a series of postsurgical complications, the final blow was a bloodstream infection that sent him into shock and resisted treatment with antibiotics.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think my dad would walk in for a hip replacement and be dead two months later,” said Amy Fix, one of his daughters.

Not until the day Mr. Armbruster died did a laboratory culture identify the organism that had infected him: Acinetobacter baumannii.

Full article: http://finance.yahoo.com/insurance/article/108931/rising-threat-of-infections-unfazed-by-antibiotics?mod=insurance-health

Full article: http://www.lymeneteurope.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1336#p9502

Excerpt:

Abstract
Using PCR in conjunction with pre-enrichment culture, we detected Bartonella henselae and B. vinsonii subspecies berkhoffii in the blood of 14 immunocompetent persons who had frequent animal contact and arthropod exposure.

Attempts to isolate Bartonella sp. from immunocompetent persons with serologic, pathologic, or molecular evidence of infection are often unsuccessful; several investigators have indicated that Bartonella isolation methods need to be improved (1–4). By combining PCR and pre-enrichment culture, we detected B. henselae and B. vinsonii subspecies berkhoffii infection in the blood of immunocompetent persons who had arthropod and occupational animal exposure

The Study

From November 2004 through June 2005, blood and serum samples from 42 persons were tested, and 14 completed a questionnaire, approved by the North Carolina State University Institutional Review Board. Age, sex, animal contact, history of bites, environment, outdoor activity, arthropod contact, travel, and medical history were surveyed. Bacterial isolation, PCR amplification, and cloning were performed by using previously described methods (5–7). Each blood sample was tested by PCR after direct DNA extraction, pre-enrichment culture for at least 7 days, and subculture onto a blood agar plate (Figure). An uninoculated, pre-enrichment culture was processed simultaneously as a control. Methods used for DNA extraction and conventional and real-time PCR targeting of the Bartonella 16S-23S intergenic spacer (ITS) region and heme-binding protein (Pap31) gene have been described (7,8). Conventional PCR amplicons were cloned with the pGEM-T Easy Vector System (Promega, Madison, WI, USA); sequencing was performed by Davis Sequencing, Inc. (Davis, CA, USA). Sequences were aligned and compared with GenBank sequences with AlignX software (Vector NTI Suite 6.0 (InforMax, Inc., Bethesda, MD, USA) (7,8). B. vinsonii subsp. berkhoffii, B. henselae, and B. quintana antibodies were determined by using a modification of a previously described immunofluorescence antibody assay (IFA) procedure (9

Study participants included 12 women and 2 men, ranging in age from 30 to 53 years; all of them reported occupational animal contact for >10 years (Table). Most had daily contact with cats (13 persons) and dogs (12 persons). All participants reported animal bites or scratches (primarily from cats) and arthropod exposure, including fleas, ticks, biting flies, mosquitoes, lice, mites, or chiggers. All participants reported intermittent or chronic clinical symptoms, including fatigue, arthralgia, myalgia, headache, memory loss, ataxia, and paresthesia (Table). Illness was most frequently mild to moderate in severity, with a waxing and waning course, and all but 2 persons could perform occupational activities. Of the 14 participants, 9 had been evaluated by a cardiologist, 8 each by an infectious disease physician or a neurologist, and 5 each by an internist or a rheumatologist. Eleven participants had received antimicrobial drugs.

Linda’s comment:  Excuse me but this is very common AND TRAGIC!!  I don’t know what it is going to take to get treatments for those suffering from Lyme.  I personally treated both Lyme infections with alternatives, BUT then again I live in a state that has many licensing boards so doctors don’t have to FEAR the authorities.  The AMA can’t touch the method of treatment that alternative doctor prescribe.  The tragic part of this is insurance companies will NOT pay for alternatives…unless of course, you live in Alaska and there many of the insurance companies are paying for alternative treatments and modalities….

A month ago, Bart Fenolio was told he had Lou Gehrig’s disease and had two months to live. Doctors advised his wife, Heidi, to take him home and call a hospice. Continued

Linda’s comments: To begin with I stopped drinking from fountains like this years ago. I do my best to drink beverages from glass bottles. Not always easy, but I do my best. This is news that should be shared with all your families, friends, colleagues, schools, etc., etc., etc. What is scary is knowing that you can be infected with “fecal” material. Read the article below carefully, as there are several bacteria’s, which can be deadly to a person with a chronic illness. Also think about our children. I would print this out and show your children. They need to know how dangerous soda fountains can be to them. Sometimes that is all it takes to get them to listen up, especially if they know they could be drinking fecal material…it is worth the shot….

Full article:
Bacteria Found In Nearly Half Of Fast-Food Soda Fountains

Excerpt:

A group of microbiologists at Virginia’s Hollins University found alarming levels of bacteria, possibly from feces, in fast-food soda fountains.

A scary 48 percent of machine beverages tested contained coliform bacteria – which can originate in fecal matter, the International Journal of Food Microbiology study showed. Even more worrying: Most of the bacteria identified were resistant to antibiotics.

Objective:We report a typical case of earlobe lymphocytoma.
Method:A case report and literature review are presented.
Results:A 10-year-old girl presented with a blue-coloured earlobe. A
diagnosis of Lyme disease was confirmed by serological tests. Lyme
borreliosis is the most common tick-borne disease in the northern
hemisphere. It is caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi sensu
lato. The patient was successfully treated with antibiotics.
Conclusion:The diagnostic process and ENT symptomatology of Lyme disease
and borrelial lymphocytoma are summarised and discussed. Continued

A 15-year-old girl being treated with imatinib for chronic myelogenous
leukemia (CML) presented with acute vision loss in her right eye
accompanied by swelling of the right side of her neck. On examination,
she was found to have disk and macular edema of the right eye.
Fine-needle aspiration and excisional biopsies of an enlarged
submandibular lymph node were negative for malignancy. Although initial
serologies were equivocal for Bartonella henselae, repeat serologies
performed 1 week later upon the appearance of a macular star were
positive. This is the first reported case of B. henselae in a patient
with CML. Continued

TACDA is the acronym for the American Civil Defence Association.
In one of the documents on their web site at www.tacda.org, there are
instructions on how to prepare for both chemical and biological attacks. Continued