There is much to fear about Lyme disease

Mike Hodges
June 21, 2001

Wheaton -- There I sat on the afternoon of June 13, tucked away in a
dark sauna reading the Chicago Tribune, as I do every day. Why do I sit
in there every day? Lyme-disease treatment. I use an IV to drip 2 grams
of antibiotics into my body every day to fight this disease that has
destroyed my life.

Why the sauna? Heat breaks down the protective layers in the Lyme
bacteria, allowing the antibiotics to kill off the spirochete easier.
Studies have shown antibiotics are 200 times more effective in killing
the Lyme spirochete when in warm temperatures for 20 minutes or more.

So there I was in the sauna, reading "Lyme disease study finds little to
fear, 2 others question need for antibiotics," the irresponsible
insurance-industry propaganda article on Lyme disease.

I wasn't treated for Lyme disease until several years after the first
bite. I was given a small dose of doxycycline for 10 days, which made my
symptoms disappear for several years. During that time, an occasional
funny symptom would crop up, but it was small enough that I could ignore
it.

Unfortunately things started getting worse. Blurry vision, passing out,
irregular heartbeats, swollen feet, chest pain. Eventually I began to
suffer from neuro-Lyme, which is when the spirochetes get enough numbers
in your body to start infecting your brain and your nervous system. On a
chilling day in November of 1998, I collapsed and was taken to the
hospital by ambulance.

Seems my nervous system couldn't take it anymore. My heart rate dipped
to 30, and I had to stay overnight in the hospital. For a year I had
severe vertigo, couldn't walk, could barely see, had chest pains and
irregular heartbeats, couldn't drive, slept 20 hours a day, couldn't
feel my legs and arms, had urination problems, had severe muscle pain
and arthritis, couldn't swallow, had difficulty breathing and speaking,
couldn't lift anything, had swollen glands and {*filter*} paralysis, and I
couldn't even remember my name.

It wasn't until I was diagnosed with Lyme disease that my treatment
began and I began to feel better. At first I started on {*filter*}
antibiotics, which made things much worse at first. The spirochete
releases a neuro-toxin into your {*filter*}stream when killed. This sometimes
means the treatment for Lyme is worse than the disease at points.

It wasn't until I started long-term IV antibiotics that things got a lot
better. After a year of long-term IV, many symptoms started to
disappear. There is much to fear from Lyme. But there is even more to
fear from incompetent doctors who side with insurance company policy.

I am better now. I still have some stubborn symptoms remaining, but I am
light-years ahead of what I was one year ago. And to think what would
have become of me had I not had the proper treatment, I can only
imagine. Your article and the incomplete study behind it aren't helping
anyone overcome anything.

Long-term antibiotics do help Lyme patients. I am living, walking,
talking, smiling proof of that, and so are many other people.

There is much to fear about Lyme disease,
Chicago Tribune - Opinion, 21 Jun 01
http://www.***.com/ ,266...

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Chicago Tribune - Opinion
There is much to fear about Lyme disease
Mike Hodges
June 21, 2001
http://chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/voiceofthepeople/article/0,266...

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Go figure.

Sal

It is interesting that B31 is one of
the major strains of Lyme disease present in the Chicago area.  Most  labs
don't report the 31 band because
the CDC decided to  use the strain for the vaccine .  If you have the
band-31-you have Lyme disease.  You don't have the disease by CDC standards
because this is the band that shows up in vaccinated individuals.  The CDC
does not include it in the bands necessary for a positive Western blot because
they don't want to confuse vaccinated with non-vaccinated individuals. This is
the way , in my opinion, pure speculation, the CDC  *erradicates* a disease.
Use one of the most important indicators that an individual has a disease, use
this band for the vaccination, mandate vaccination for the disease by any means
necessary,  don't allow the strain used for the vaccine to be counted in
testing  and reporting of the disease ----and there you go--the disease is soon
 declared eliminated. The CDC looks like they are doing something other than
collecting tax dollars for free . The whole  population shows antibodies to the
disease (exposure) because they have been vaccinated. When a patient sees a
doctor and the patient has all the symptoms and signs of the disease--a new
syndrome is born.  It can't possibly be the disease because the person has had
the mandated vaccine for the disease and the CDC says that the vaccine is
effective.
______________________________
source: Lyme Disease National Clarion Vol. 1 No. 2 Summer 1994
Overview of VI International Conference on Lyme Borreliosis
Bologna, Italy June 19-22, 1994.  Report by Janice Beers, JD

Many Infected Ticks In Illinois

Cheng,Picken, Bouseman, Hayden, Picken, Strle, Trenholme

ANTIGENIC AND GENETIC HETEROGENITY OF BORRELIA BURGDORFERI ISOLATED FROM
TICKS AND SMALL ANIMALS IN ILLINOIS
Abstract P010M.  Program and Abstracts [Bologna, Italy 1994]

   Researchers characterized 40 strains of the spirochete, Borrelia
burgdorferi.  All were obtained in 1992 from balack-legged ticks, Ixodes
scapularis (formerly known as deer ticks, Ixodes dammini), the bulk of them
from within a small area of northern Illinois.  Most ticks were collected
from clothing as well as from small animals.
   Most of the strains were determined to be Borrelia burgdorferi sensu
stricto strains B31 and 297, although unusual isolates were found, some
similar to isolates from elsewhere.

    This quote from the "Discussion" on the poster has widespread
implications.

    "The above data show that a group of 33 Borrelia burgorferi sensu stricto
isolates derived from ticks and small animals collected within Illinois and
Wisconsin are heterogeneous with regard to their protein profiles, LRFPs
[large restriction fragment patterns], and amino-acid sequence of variant Osp
C proteins.  These findings are surprising since they were collected from a
relatively small geographic area.  Also of interest is the fact that 22 of
the 33 isolates belonged to the same LRFP as strain 297, a human CNS [central
nervous system] isolate.  This presumably indicates that the majority of the
isolates from ticks and small animals in N. Illinois are potentially
infectious for humas, although the incidence of overt Lyme borreliosis in
this region is very low.  We have studied the infection rate among ticks at
one site in Ogle County in N. Illinois using both culture and PCR [polymerase
chain reaction] for detection of spirochetes.  The infection rates we found
were 37.5% by culture and 39.5% by PCR.  Given these findings, it seems
surprising that more cases of Lyme Borreliosis are not reported from this
region..." Emphasis added.
______________
______________
J Mol Microbiol Biotechnol 2000 Oct;2(4):505-7

Molecular characterization of Borrelia spp. isolates from greater
metropolitan Chicago reveals the presence of Borrelia bissettii. Preliminary
report.

Picken RN, Picken MM
Loyola University Medical Center, Department of Pathology, Maywood, Illinois
60153

Lyme Disease in the US is concentrated in three endemic areas: the
Northeast, the upper mid-West, and the Pacific coast. In the mid-West, the
range of Lyme disease has expanded to include large parts of Wisconsin and
Minnesota. Despite its proximity to the mid-Western focus, Illinois, so far,
has not been considered an endemic area. However, more recent data suggest
that this situation may be changing. Also, the extent of borrelial diversity
in the mid-West remains largely unexplored. Here, we present preliminary
results on the molecular characterization of Borrelia isolates from rodents
captured in Cook and Lake Counties, both of which are parts of the greater
metropolitan Chicago area in Illinois. We investigated the rodent reservoir
present in forested areas of suburban Chicago in order to determine the
frequency of infection with the Lyme disease agent(s) by culture isolation
of Borrelia spirochetes (Picken et al., unpublished). Rodent isolates of
Borrelia were identified to the species level by genetic characterization.
In total, 19 isolates were obtained over 3 years from NW Cook Co. and Lake
Co. Pulsed-field gel electrophoretic analysis of Mlul digested DNA from
these isolates showed macrorestriction patterns similar to that of the
Californian isolate, strain DN127 (PF type I), New York isolate strain 25015
(PF type II), or a variant of the latter (PF type III). Sequence data
generated from the rrf(5S)-rrl(23S) intergenic spacer region of the
ribosomal RNA gene cluster confirmed the identity of all the Chicago
isolates studied to date as B. bissettii. These strains are unlike our
previous Borrelia isolates from NW Illinois and Wisconsin. In addition,
there was a pre{*filter*} association of B. bissettii infection with pratal
rodent species such as Microtus pennsylvanicus and Zapus hudsonius. The
relationship of this novel enzootic focus to the established mid-Western
endemic focus of Lyme disease remains to be elucidated. The geographic range
and reservoir diversity of this organism may have hitherto been
underestimated.

source:  the supplement to The American Journal of Medicine based on the
symposium held Dec. 7-8, 1994.  The supplement was in the April 24, 1995
Volume 98 (suppl 4A) of The American Journal of Medicine

pg.4A-9S
D. Fish:  .......".I see some emerging problems in the Midwest--Indiana,
Illinois, and perhaps Ohio--where there are white tailed deer.......The
problem there is that it is an extremely fractionated enviornment--there is
a lot of agriculture and many isolated wood lots.  There are deer problems
in some of those ares, and it is just a matter of the ticks arriving there.
 We are not sure exactly how they get from one place to the next,"  (try
birds) "but when you have a continuous forest, as in New York State, there
is asteady progression of ticks into deer populations that have not had
ticks before.  Some areas of the Midwest,
I think , are TICKING TIME BOMBS.  Forested river valleys seem to be
convenient corridors for deer movement in the midwest....." This is from
1994.  The editor for this supplement was L.H. Sigal
from the same source:  Durland  Fish:....."  A known tick bite is a
relatively poor predictor of Lyme disease, because only 1-3% of reported
tick bite incidents result in disease. In contrast, 86% OF PERSONS WITH
LYME DISEASE ARE UNAWARE OF THE CAUSATIVE TICK BITE.  Clearly,  exposure to
ticks is a more important determinant of risk than are specific incidents
of tick bite."

from:  Mandell , Douglas and
 Bennett's Principles and
 Practice of Infectious Diseases
 4th edition-1995
Chapter 219
Borrelia Burgdorferi
author:  Allen Steere
..."In a.....subset of patients
with....... late Lyme disease who are
incompletely treated with antibiotics
during the first several weeks of
infection, the hum{*filter*}immune
 response to B. burgdorferi may be
 aborted...."