Birds Play an Important Role in the Spread of Lyme Disease -Yale Study Finds
By Linda on Jan 7, 2010 in Infections | comments(0)
*********They had to spend thousands perhaps, even more to find that Birds are playing an important role in the spread of Lyme Disease?? What??? Are you telling me that birds stop at each border and request the right to fly over your state?? What a big waste of money….why doesn’t Yale and the Infectious Disease docs and other specialists at Yale, who say there is NO chronic Lyme, spend money finding a cure for Lyme disease instead of finding out what we patient’s already know. Give me a break!!
*********It is time that patient’s start standing up and pushing back….sitting back and doing nothing is getting us no where.
*********We need to stop “fearing” city hall, when we can be city hall in these Lyme wars.
*********Just remember folks, Lyme isn’t just carried by ticks….look to birds, rodents, mice, we need to understand that it is up to us Lymie’s to take a stand.
Regards,
Linda
Article Excerpt:
New Haven, Conn. – 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. The study appears online in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
Researchers analyzed published records and concluded that at least 70 species of North American birds are susceptible to infection by black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis), the principal vector of the Lyme disease bacterium (Borrelia burgdorferi). The evidence also suggests that these bird species are dispersing infected ticks into areas that had previously been free of the disease, such as Canada.
Lyme disease bacterium is usually associated with small mammals such as mice and squirrels. Immature ticks (in the larval and nymphal stages) become infected with the bacterium when they feed on these mammals. During subsequent blood meals, an infected tick transmits the infection to other hosts, including humans. White-tailed deer-while playing an important role in maintaining and spreading tick populations-are a biological dead end for the bacterium because its blood is immune to infection.
Birds, however, are not immune and numerous species get infected and are capable of transmitting the pathogen onto ticks, the researchers found. What remains to be seen is whether the B. burgdorferi strains that can infect birds can also cause disease in humans. If so, the role of birds in the epidemiology of Lyme disease could be profound.
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