All Posts Tagged With: "CFS"

I live in Ontario and I have Lyme disease. I contracted Lyme here. I was misdiagnosed for four year and I have chronic late stage Lyme. I am one of thousands of people who have this contracted disease in this country. This disease is like AIDS. It affects your immune system and every part of your body and is incurable. It will and can kill a person. Like AIDS it requires long term treatment but with antibiotics not antivirals since it is a bacterial infection.

The most common way of contracting Lyme is through a tick bite but there is science showing it can be passed on through birth and through breast feeding.(1,2) The bacteria that causes Lyme disease has also been discovered in semen although there have yet to have studies on if it is sexually transmitted although the bacteria is a Spirochete a relative to syphilis.(3) We also don`t screen the blood or organ donor supply so it may be possible to contract the disease this way too.(4)

Full article: http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&id=20505978&retmode=ref&cmd=prlinks

Excerpt:

INTRODUCTION: Acute transverse myelitis (ATM) is a rare disorder
(1-8 new cases per million of population per year), with 20% of
all cases occurring in patients younger than 18 years of age.
Diagnosis requires clinical symptoms and evidence of inflammation
within the spinal cord (cerebrospinal fluid and/or magnetic
resonance imaging). ATM due to neuroborreliosis typically
presents with impressive clinical manifestations.
CASE PRESENTATION: Here we present a case of Lyme
neuroborreliosis-associated ATM with severe MRI and CSF findings,
but surprisingly few clinical manifestations and late conversion
of the immunoglobulin G CSF/blood index of Borrelia burgdorferi
sensu lato.
CONCLUSION:
Clinical symptoms and signs of neuroborrelial ATM may be minimal,
even in cases with severe involvement of the spine, as shown by
imaging studies. The CSF/blood index can be negative in the early
stages and does not exclude Lyme neuroborreliosis; if there is
strong clinical suspicion of Lyme neuroborreliosis, appropriate
treatment should be started and the CSF/blood index repeated to
confirm the diagnosis.

Linda’s comment:   WHY are they not telling Lyme patients to avoid donating blood?

Excerpt:

There’s been a flurry of activity by experts trying to suss out if the virus XMRV, which has been associated with chronic fatigue syndrome, poses a threat to the U.S. blood supply.

On Friday,  Louis Katz, executive vice-president of medical affairs at Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center in Davenport, Iowa, and a member of the AABB task force studying the issue, gave his own latest assessment of the situation: People who have been diagnosed by a doctor with CFS should not donate blood, at least not at this point. (The AABB is an association that includes the facilities that collect virtually all of the U.S. blood supply.)

Last October, a paper in the journal Science linked XMRV — first discovered in 2006 — to CFS, which affects an estimated 17 million people worldwide. Since then, public health officials have been racing to learn more. Although it still isn’t yet known whether XMRV causes CFS or any other disease, there are concerns that the virus might be transmitted through blood donations.

Full article: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010817

Excerpt:

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) studies from our laboratory and
others described decreased natural killer cell cytotoxicity
(NKCC) and elevated proportion of lymphocytes expressing the
activation marker, dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPPIV) also known as
CD26. However, neither these assays nor other laboratory tests
are widely accepted for the diagnosis or prognosis of CFS. This
study sought to determine if NKCC or DPPIV/CD26 have diagnostic
accuracy for CFS.

Linda’s comments:  I attended a lecture by Dr Martin Pall regarding NO/ONOO and found it extremely interesting.  You can google him and get a large number of articles by Dr Pall.  Well worth your reading time.

Excerpt:

We are excited to present information from the forthcoming book by Martin L. Pall, PhD, who shows that all these conditions – and probably many others – involve the same key biochemical response: elevated levels of nitric oxide (NO) and its oxidant product peroxynitrite (ONOO–), which initiate a biochemical vicious cycle. Although the mechanisms underlying this ongoing NO/ONOO– cycle are well-documented, Dr. Pall presents new information about how this cycle interacts to produce patterns of symptoms. The theory elegantly answers many questions, including: Continued

The Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI) has recently published a research study revealing the prevalence of XMRV in patients with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, ME/CFS, or what has most recently been called, X associated neuro-immune disease (XAND). Continued