All Posts Tagged With: "ehrlichiosis"

Linda’s comments:  This comment by Wormser  raises my blood pressure ::::“It is so new in our area, it has flown under the radar,” says Moore’s physician Gary P. Wormser, M.D., the chief of infectious diseases at Westchester Medical Center and New York Medical College and head of a team researching tick diseases. “A lot of patients haven’t heard of it, and a lot of doctors don’t know about it.”::::

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41973641/ns/health-infectious_diseases/

Excerpt:

Wild raspberries lured Jacqueline Moore over the wall of her new garden in Westchester County, New York. It was July 2008, and Moore, her husband and their two small kids had just moved up from Manhattan. She was painting the kitchen, up on a ladder, when she glanced out the window and spotted the flash of red. She was thrilled: This was what they had left the city for. She called the kids, and they hopped over the wall. They picked raspberries every day for two weeks. 

About the time the berries ran out, Moore—who was 34 then, a personal trainer and marathoner—started feeling an achein her neck and shoulder. She thought painting the ceiling was to blame; or maybe it was the borrowed mattress she and her husband were sleeping on. Then she noticed herself getting irritable. Family were visiting to see the new house, and “I was having trouble taking care of the guests,” she recalls. “Every day, I would be twice as tired as I had been the day before.” …..

“It is so new in our area, it has flown under the radar,” says Moore’s physician Gary P. Wormser, M.D., the chief of infectious diseases at Westchester Medical Center and New York Medical College and head of a team researching tick diseases. “A lot of patients haven’t heard of it, and a lot of doctors don’t know about it.”

Full article: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/swineflu/news/jul2110newsscan.html 

Excerpt:

Among new tick-related infectious disease findings presented at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Disease (ICEID), which ended Jul 14 in Atlanta, were a report on the first zoonotic babesiosis case documented in Tennessee and a report on ehrlichiosis infections in Minnesota and Wisconsin involving a species that had not previously been identified in North America. In the first report, a group from the Tennessee Department of Health, Vanderbilt University, and the CDC diagnosed babesiosis in an immunosuppressed patient who began to have fever, fatigue, and headache. He had not traveled outside Tennessee in several years and had been exposed to ticks during hunting trips. Babesia parasites were noted on the man’s blood smear, and molecular analysis revealed that it was a novel species, but attempts to isolate it were unsuccessful. The man’s symptoms resolved after 10 days of treatment. The researchers said efforts to identify the animal host and tick vectors are ongoing and that the case serves as a reminder that patients can have babesiosis without exposure to known endemic areas and without testing positive to previously known species. In the second report, local health officials and CDC and Mayo Clinic experts described the identification of Ehrlichia DNA from Mayo Clinic blood samples of patients from the two states involving a species similar to E muris that had not been previously identified in North America. The organism was found in 2009 in the blood of 4 patients, 3 from Wisconsin and 1 from Minnesota. All had reported fever and headache, and all had lymphopenia. All recovered with doxycycline treatment. Serological studies also suggested 40 more probable cases among Wisconsin residents. A survey of the patients found dog contact in 91% and possible tick exposure in 85%. The group concluded that more studies are needed to identify the epidemiologic and clinical features of infections with the E muris–like organism and that better testing in the region could help identify the infections.

Full article: http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articles/PMC1490240;jsessionid=7D7D2D45FB70B5A24793992EDD921DFB.jvm4

Excerpt:

Abstract

A case of 65-year-old male is reported who presented with myalgias, headache, and fever. He subsequently developed myocarditis and was diagnosed to have anaplasmosis on peripheral blood smear. He was treated with doxycycline for 30 days. A coronary angiogram done after recovery showed normal epicardial arteries. The case illustrates the importance of a careful examination of the peripheral smear, with a high index of clinical suspicion, which led to prompt treatment and complete recovery of the patient

Ehrlichiosis, first discovered before 1910, has been recognized to cause human infection since 1986.1 It belongs to Rickettsiaceae family. Ehrlichiae are small, obligate intracellular bacteria that grow in cytoplasmic vacuoles to form clusters called morulae. Three distinct species cause human ehrlichiosis. E. chaffeensis predominantly affects the monocytes and is hence termed human monocytic ehrlichiosis (HME) while E. phagocytophilium, and E. ewingii cause human granulocytic ehrlichiosis.2E. phagocytophiliumE. equi are now recognized as the same organism and has been renamed Anaplasma phagocytophilum; the disease is now known as Human Granulocytic Anaplasmosis (HGA). Both HME and HGA share similar clinical and laboratory features and are treated with the same antimicrobials.

Full article: http://www.news-medical.net/news/20100416/International-experts-discuss-threats-posed-by-ticks-and-fleas.aspx

Excerpt:

As experts from around the world met in New York this week they discussed the need for greater understanding of the threat posed by ticks, fleas and sand flies. Leading scientists called on veterinarians and dog-owners around the world to take action to protect dogs and humans from potentially lethal diseases.

Ticks, mosquitoes, fleas and, in some countries, sand flies are critical in the transmission of diseases to both dogs and humans, including life-threatening conditions such as Lyme Disease, Leishmaniasis and other important diseases such as Ehrlichiosis.