Ehrlichia are tick-borne obligately intracellular bacteria that
cause significant diseases in veterinary natural hosts, including
livestock and companion animals, and are now considered important
zoonotic pathogens in humans. Vaccines are needed for these
veterinary and zoonotic human pathogens, but many obstacles exist
that have impeded their development. These obstacles include
understanding genetic and antigenic variability, influence of the
host on the pathogen phenotype and immunogenicity, identification
of the ehrlichial antigens that stimulate protective immunity and
those that elicit immunopathology, development of animal models
that faithfully reflect the immune responses of the hosts and
understanding molecular host-pathogen interactions involved in
immune evasion or that may be blocked by the host immune
response.
We review the obstacles and progress in addressing barriers
associated with vaccine development to protect livestock,
companion animals and humans against these host defense-evasive
and cell function-manipulative, vector-transmitted pathogens.
INTRODUCTION: Lyme disease (LD) is a tick-borne disease, caused by Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato spirochetes, transmitted by Ixodes ricinus complex ticks, which leads to multiple systemic clinical manifestations. In Brazil, a different syndrome is described that mimics LD symptoms, but that also manifests high frequencies of recurrent episodes and immune-allergic manifestations. It is transmitted by the Amblyomma cajennense tick and the etiological agent is an uncultivable spirochete with atypical morphology. Due to its particularities, this emerging zoonosis has been called Brazilian LD-like syndrome or Baggio-Yoshinari Syndrome (BYS). OBJECTIVE: To describe the neurological spectrum of BYS. PATIENTS: Thirty patients with neurological symptoms of BYS were analysed. RESULTS: Mean age of patients was 34.2 ± 13.3 years old (6 to 63 years); 20 were females and 10 males. A high number of recurrent episodes (73.6%) and severe psychiatric or psycho-social disturbances (20%) were distinguishing features. Erythema migrans similar to those seen in the Northern hemisphere was identified in 43.3% of patients at disease onset. The recurrence of skin lesions diminished as the disease progressed. Articular symptoms (arthritis) happened in nearly half of patients at BYS onset and during relapsing episodes. CONCLUSIONS: The BYS is considered a new tick borne disease in Brazil that differs from classical LD observed in the Northern hemisphere. BYS replicates most of the neurological symptoms observed in LD, except for the additional presence of relapsing episodes and the tendency to cause chronic neurological and articular manifestations.
An American soldier has died from appears to be an Ebola type virus at a remote out post in southern Afghanistan.
Afghanistan the U.S. military officials sent a medical team to a remote outpost of the U.S. Army after a soldier in the unit died from an what turned out to Hemorrhagic fever.
Sgt. Robert Gordon died after being infected by a tick bite.
He died back on September 16th from Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.
This poses a big new added risk to our troops Ebola is fatal in approximately 30 percent of the time.
Thanks for visiting the new blog! Now that you are here, allow
us to reward you with a free sample from Dr. Garry Gordon's new book. Download
Chapters 1-3 below! FREE DOWNLOAD! Chapters
1-3
