Blog - Page 3 of 22 - Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Dr. Liz Horn Explains How Lyme Disease Biobank Samples are Foundational to the LymeX Diagnostics Prize

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Spotlight Series

In this interview, the LymeX Diagnostic Prize talked with Liz Horn, PhD/MDI, Principal Investigator for Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Lyme Disease Biobank (LDB), about her work in Lyme disease, the challenges researchers face, how the LymeX Diagnostics Prize could help further our understanding of the disease and how Lyme patient samples from our biobank are critical to the competition’s success.

This interview has been edited from the original.

“What’s exciting about the LymeX Diagnostics Prize is that you have a lot of different people with good ideas and different teams with a lot of different technologies trying to solve this problem.”

– Liz Horn, PhD/MDI

The LymeX Diagnostics Prize is a multiphase competition funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation to accelerate the development of Lyme disease diagnostics. Through October 2023, the 10 teams selected to be part of Phase 2 of the LymeX Diagnostics Prize are participating in a virtual accelerator designed to help them refine their concepts for detecting active Lyme disease infections in people. As the Phase 2 accelerator cohort continues to develop their diagnostics, the teams have access to scientific advisors who provide valuable insight and feedback from their extensive experience in Lyme disease diagnostics, one of whom is Dr. Horn. The Phase 2 cohort also has access to the blood and urine samples donated to LDB by Lyme patients.

A cancer biologist by training, Dr. Horn has spent her career working with nonprofit research organizations to help build research programs, registries, and biorepositories. She joined Bay Area Lyme Foundation in 2013 to lead the creation of a Lyme disease biorepository. As a scientific advisor for the LymeX Diagnostics Prize, Dr. Horn is mentoring participating teams through office hours and webinars.

LymeX: As the principal investigator for the Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Lyme Disease Biobank, you have extensive experience in Lyme disease research. How did you first start working in the field, and what are you focusing on now with the biorepository?

Ticktective with Dana Parish: Stealth Invader: Unveiling Lyme’s Hidden Past

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Kris Newby

Kris Newby is an award-winning medical science writer and the senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary UNDER OUR SKIN, which was a 2010 Oscar semifinalist. Her book BITTEN: The Secret History of Biological Weapons and Lyme Disease has won three international book awards for journalism and narrative nonfiction. She has two engineering degrees and has worked as a science/technology writer for Stanford Medical School, Apple, and other Silicon Valley companies.

To read the podcast transcript, click here.

Watch Now

A Broader Definition of Health Through Ancestral Learning, Diet and Better Understanding of the Human Body

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

In this podcast episode, host Lia Gaertner interviews Chris Kresser, a renowned expert in functional medicine and ancestral health. Kresser shares his personal health journey, which involved struggling with chronic illness and eventually finding his way to functional medicine. He discusses the importance of zooming in and zooming out in managing chronic illness, as well as the broader definition of health as human flourishing. Kresser also talks about his approach to diet, which involves giving himself permission to eat a variety of foods while prioritizing those that make him feel good. He emphasizes the importance of the ecosystem in managing chronic illness, focusing on factors such as gut health, lifestyle, stress management, and finding joy and fulfillment in life. Kresser concludes by offering advice to individuals with Lyme disease and chronic illness, highlighting the significance of addressing the entire ecosystem rather than solely focusing on the pathogen.

Lia Gaertner: Welcome to the Ticktective podcast and video series, a program of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, where our mission is to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure. I’m your host, Lia Gaertner, director of Education and outreach. Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the USA and is a global issue. This show includes interviews with the researchers we fund, as well as other interesting people in the Lyme scientific community. We are a nonprofit foundation based in Silicon Valley. Thanks to a generous grant that covers all of our overhead, 100% of all donations go directly to support, research and prevention programs. You can find out more or donate@bayarealyme.org.

Lia Gaertner: Thank you, Chris Kresser, for joining me on the Ticktective™ video and podcast series.

Chris Kresser: Thanks for having me, Lia. It’s a pleasure.

Lia Gaertner: Chris Kresser is a renowned expert leading clinician and top educator in the fields of functional medicine and ancestral health. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Paleo Cure, as well as the book Unconventional Medicine. Chris is the co-founder and educational director of the California Center for Functional Medicine and the founder of the Kresser Institute. Chris regularly shares his evidence-based insights from trusted sources and world-renowned health practitioners and coaches through his blogs, webcast interviews, and his own podcast, Revolution Health Radio. So, Chris, during your decade-long struggle with chronic illness, you learned firsthand where healthcare mattered most and where it came up short. After seeking the help of more than 30 healthcare practitioners and ultimately having to learn and implement behavior changes on your own with limited support, you emerged with your health and a vision and drive for changing and improving the practice and education of functional medicine. Can you please tell us about your health journey?

Chris Kresser: I’ll be brief because it was long and arduous, but I took off to travel around the world for a couple of years in my early twenties, and I was doing a lot of surfing. I was in a little village on Sumbawa, which is an island in Indonesia, and a bunch of the people there who were surfing at that break got exposed to a waterborne pathogen, actually several pathogens. There was a stagnant pool of water near the river mouth there, and locals dug a trench to drain that pool into the river mouth. And all of that water where cows had been defecating went out into the surf break, which are often located right at the river mouth. And unbeknownst to a lot of us who were there surfing, we were exposed to it and I would say 70-80% of the people there got quite sick.

I took some antibiotics that I had in my medical kit and the acute phase of it passed relatively quickly. But as I continued to travel after that, I went to the Maldives and was there for a few months and I was in South Africa and Reunion Island, Mauritius, and Madagascar. After about six, seven months, I started feeling really sick and it became clear to me that it wasn’t something that was just temporary that was going to go away. So, I made my way back to Australia and that was where I started to seek medical care. And then when I didn’t make much progress, I decided to go back home to the US and although most of the doctors and other practitioners I saw meant very well and did their best to help me, it was pretty clear that the medical system was not set up to deal with those kinds of problems.

Infectious Minds: Unraveling the Link Between Infections & Psychiatric Disorders

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

In this interview, psychiatrist Dr. Robert Bransfield explains the links between neuropsychiatric disorders and infections. He recounts his successes treating patients who repeatedly fail to respond to conventional interventions. Dr. Bransfield describes how clinical diagnoses of infection, along with correct administration and interpretation of testing, plus treating patients with antibiotics can, in many cases, lead to an abatement of a variety of psychiatric disorders, from psychosis to depression and anxiety. He also explores the connection between tick-borne diseases in maternal-fetal transfer of infections and the rise in autism in children.

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity. Bibliography and references are posted below.

“What are people in the future going to say about the Lyme crisis? I’m sure this will be judged by history as a great failure of our healthcare system, that we didn’t move quickly enough with this, and that people were holding back progress.”

—Dr. Robert Bransfield

Dana Parish: Hi, I am Dana Parish, and I am hosting the Ticktective podcast on behalf of Bay Area Lyme Foundation. I am here today with a wonderful psychiatrist, Dr. Robert C. Bransfield, MD, DLF APA. He is a graduate of Rutgers College and George Washington University School of Medicine. He completed his psychiatric residency training at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital. He’s board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in psychiatry and is a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He’s a clinical associate professor of Psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, and he is well published in the peer reviewed literature. Welcome Dr. Bransfield. Thank you so much for talking to me today. How are you?

Robert Bransfield: Thank you for inviting me.

Dana Parish: It’s my pleasure. I’ve learned so much from you over the years about microbes and mental illness. You’ve blown my mind a million times and I cannot wait to share your knowledge today with everybody who’s going to watch and listen to this podcast. So, my first question is, does psychiatry pay enough attention and does medicine pay enough attention to microbes in infections and pathogens in mental illness? And if not, what is going on with the brain when we get neurologic infections?

Robert Bransfield: Well, not enough. If you look at the old views of what caused psychiatric issues, it was thought to be demonic possession. Then we blamed our mothers, and then we blamed serotonin. It doesn’t quite make sense (to people) that there’s something that causes psychiatric illness. But these illnesses don’t just come out of nowhere.

The problem is that nothing in the known universe for its size is more complex than the human brain. So, understanding the pathophysiology of the human brain is very challenging, especially the part involving psychiatric illness. That is much more complicated than general neurological illness where the circuits are not as complex as the circuits that impact psychiatric functioning. So, this causes a problem. When we look at all the possibilities, there are many things that contribute to mental illness—microbes are just one of them. But I think they are a very significant one and when you look long and hard enough, this does explain many psychiatric illnesses.

Ticktective with Dana Parish: From Harvard MD to MS Patient: Wisdom from Both Sides

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Annie Brewster, MD

Annie Brewster is an Assistant Professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, a practicing physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, a writer and a storyteller. She is also a patient, diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2001. In response to the disconnection she experienced in healthcare, both as a patient and a provider, and motivated by her belief in the power of stories, she started recording patient narratives in 2010. Integrating her personal experiences with the research supporting the health benefits of narrative, she founded Health Story Collaborative (HSC) in 2013. HSC is dedicated to helping individuals navigating health challenges find meaning, and ultimately heal, through storytelling. She is excited by interdisciplinary, cross-institutional collaborations that break through resistance to change. She is widely published in the press and is author of The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma, and Loss (2022).

Watch Now

Foundational Work Scores Results

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL 10-year Anniversary Series

10 Years of Collaboration Bringing Hope: How Dr. John Aucott’s Relationship with Bay Area Lyme Helped Get Groundbreaking Biobanks Launched to Fuel the Research Engine of Lyme Disease Investigations

In this blog, part of our 10-year anniversary blog series, we talk with John Aucott, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Director of the Lyme Disease Research Center, about his work and how his investigations are helping us understand persistent/chronic Lyme infections. A long-term collaborator and grant recipient of Bay Area Lyme Foundation, Dr. Aucott reflects on his history with our organization, the ongoing plight of Lyme disease patients, and the slow growth in government funding for investigations into the disease. He talks about the early days of identifying the need for well-characterized samples from Lyme patients and his role in helping launch biobank programs, including his own SLICE Study Biorepository and BAL’s Lyme Disease Biobank.

Bay Area Lyme: I want to take you right back to the very beginning of your relationship with Bay Area Lyme (BAL), the founding of your SLICE study and our Lyme Disease Biobank (LDB) and talk about everything that was happening 10 years ago. People talk about the “norming, storming and forming” stages of organizations, and there was an awful lot of activity going on 10 years ago in the world of Lyme disease. And so, please share your thoughts on what was happening around that time, your part in it, and how you came into the picture with BAL and our biobank.

SLICE Studies — The Study of Lyme disease Immunology and Clinical Events (SLICE), Johns Hopkins University Lyme Disease Research Center

John Aucott: My first memory is that I flew out to California and my agenda at that time was getting people interested in research. There was very little funding for Lyme disease research, and to some extent there still isn’t a great amount of funding for Lyme disease, especially the kind of research I do, which is clinical translational research. I’m an MD, so my research involves bridging basic science to human beings to patients. So, to be very candid about it, I was interested in getting BAL interested in my work. I pitched what we were doing. We had already set up the Johns Hopkins SLICE study, the Study of Lyme disease Immunology and Clinical Events. And at that point it was one of only two large scale biobanks collecting for Lyme disease. The other one is Dr. Gary Wormser’s, who still has a biobank in Valhalla, New York.

So, I was pitching the idea of a Lyme disease biobank to BAL, and this was a whole new concept. A biobank is a hard concept to sell initially because people don’t understand that setting up a biobank is like being Levi Strauss: It’s selling the Levis and the picks, and the shovels—not selling them the actual gold in your pocket. And it’s a hard pitch because people don’t understand that somebody has to supply the foundational work so that other people can mine for the gold. But BAL caught on to the idea that the biobank that we had at Hopkins was a crucial resource that would enable collaboration with other researchers to advance the scientific understanding of disease mechanisms and potentially identify and validate biomarkers for improving diagnostics and treatments.

LymeAid 2013 — LymeAid 2014 Scientific Panel (from left): Wendy Adams, John Aucott, MD, Carin Rollins, and Bill Robinson, MD, PhD

Bay Area Lyme bought into the importance of this idea. The first thing that happened was you asked me to be on the BAL Scientific Advisory Board soon thereafter. BAL expressed support for the SLICE study’s biobank at Hopkins and you actually gave us one of our first grants to help support our biobank work. So, that was the first thing that happened. We applied for a grant, and we got a grant from BAL to help us because we had not yet gotten federal funding for it. So, that was one of the first grants to support it, and now in 2023 we are finally receiving our first NIH funding.

How to Diagnose if Lyme Disease is Affecting the Heart and How to Best Treat It

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

Dr. Adrian Baranchuk, Professor of Medicine at Queen’s University in the Division of Cardiology in Ontario, Canada discusses his screening process for identifying Lyme infections in the heart and how to treat these patients without unnecessary pacemakers. He has published research and spoken on the topic of Lyme carditis at numerous conferences. He is passionate in his efforts to educate doctors on diagnosing Lyme-related AV heart block. Dr. Baranchuk joined Bay Area Lyme Advisor Lia Gaertner to discuss the cardiological manifestations of Lyme disease, Lyme Carditis and specific cases that illustrate his approach.

Lia Gaertner: Welcome to the Ticktective podcast and video series, a program of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, where our mission is to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure. I’m your host, Lia Gaertner. Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the USA and is a global issue. This podcast includes interviews with the researchers we fund, as well as other interesting people in the Lyme scientific community. We are a nonprofit foundation based in Silicon Valley. Thanks to a generous grant that covers all of our overhead, 100% of all donations go directly to support research and prevention programs. You can find out more or donate@bayarealyme.org. Thank you for joining the Ticktective video and podcast series, Dr. Baranchuk

Adrian Baranchuk: Thank you very much for having me.

Lia Gaertner: Dr. Baranchuk, a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, completed his training in internal medicine in cardiology, along with clinical fellowship in cardiac electrophysiology. Dr. Baranchuk is a tenured professor of medicine at Queen’s University in the division of cardiology in Ontario, Canada. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Electrocardiology, as well as a member of numerous editorial boards and a reviewer for several medical journals. Dr. Baranchuk has authored eight books and published more than 700 articles in prestigious international journals, as well as 54 book chapters, and he’s presented more than 270 abstracts around the world. He is the vice president of the International Society of Halter and Non-Invasive Electrocardiology, and the Secretary of the Inter-American Society of Cardiology. He’s also the past president of the International Society of Electrocardiology. He’s been elected as a member of the Electrophysiology Leadership section of the American College of Cardiology, and is the recipient of several teaching awards as well as being voted one of the 10 most influential Hispanics in Canada.

Adrian Baranchuk: Thank you very much for the invitation. I am so pleased to be here with you today.

Lia Gaertner: I’d like to start with a case study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ). It reads:

“A fatal case of Lyme disease in a previously healthy 37-year-old man illustrates the challenges of diagnosing Lyme disease in the absence of classic symptoms. The patient originally presented to his family doctor with flu-like symptoms, including fever, sore throat, nasal congestion, and migratory joint pain. Several weeks earlier, he had been in contact with ticks but didn’t recall removing one. His physician suspected a viral infection and the patient’s symptoms resolved. However, weeks later, he developed heart palpitations, shortness of breath, and chest discomfort for which he was sent to the emergency department. Lyme disease was suspected as the ECG showed complete heart block. He was admitted to the hospital and started treatment for Lyme carditis. But his condition unfortunately worsened quickly. Clinicians were unable to reverse the course of his illness, and he died. Serology results confirmed Lyme disease and an autopsy showed Lyme carditis.”

Research funded by Bay Area Lyme Foundation provides most comprehensive and geographically widespread whole genome sequencing of Lyme bacteria

Jacob Lemieux, MD, DPhil and Pardis Sabeti, MD, DPhil

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Research funded by Bay Area Lyme Foundation provides most comprehensive and geographically widespread whole genome sequencing of Lyme bacteria

Results may help inform future research and how physicians treat Lyme disease

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif., August 31, 2023—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, today announced the results of the most comprehensive whole genome sequencing study of Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease—a condition affecting nearly 500,000 new patients annually. Published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS Pathogens, the study is the first to define the connection between genomic markers and symptom severity, confirming that RST1 OspC type A strains, which are the most common type of Borrelia bacterial strains found in the Northeast, are associated with more disseminated infection and thus more severe Lyme disease. These new discoveries will help inform physicians that different strains of the Lyme disease bacteria in the US may cause more severe Lyme disease symptoms, which may include joint swelling, debilitating fatigue, memory loss, headaches and serious inflammation of the heart and brain.

“Dissemination from the site of inoculation to organs such as the heart, brain and joints is a key step in the development of severe Lyme disease. Up until now, the bacterial genes and plasmids associated with dissemination in humans had not yet been identified,” said first author Jacob Lemieux, MD, DPhil, Bay Area Lyme Foundation Emerging Leader Award winner, an infectious disease staff physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. “This work provides important clues into the bacterial genetic basis of dissemination and therefore suggests candidates for further study, including proteins to target for therapeutics and vaccines aimed at preventing dissemination.”

The new study also identifies the genetic changes that distinguish more virulent strains, including an enlarged genome size, a unique set of plasmids, and an expanded set of surface-exposed lipid-modified proteins called lipoproteins.

Pardis Sabeti, MD, DPhil, professor at Harvard University, Institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and co-lead author added, “This research will lay the foundation for developing sensitive diagnostics for Lyme disease and help physicians refine treatment plans, arming them with a better understanding of Lyme disease bacterial strains and their clinical manifestations.”

Biosafety is Key to Our Future: The Truth About Germs, Lab Leaks, and Information Warfare

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ticktective Podcast Transcript

In this episode of Ticktective™, Dana Parish talks with Raina MacIntyre (MBBS Hons 1, M App Epid, PhD, FRACP, FAFPHM) about how lab safety lapses are still leading to frequent undocumented lab leaks, her concerns over Long Covid and the ongoing dangers of the pandemic, and how public health agencies use information warfare to keep everyone in the dark about what is happening at the forefront of biomedical investigations, especially in the field of experimental gain of function research. Raina MacIntyre is Head of the Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia, and author of Dark Winter. She has over 450 peer-reviewed publications, has received many awards including the Sir. Henry Wellcome Medal from the Association of Military Surgeons of the US and is a member of the WHO COVID-19 Vaccine Composition Technical Advisory Group and WHO Smallpox and monkeypox working group.

Dana Parish: Welcome to the Ticktective podcast, a program of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, where our mission is to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure. I’m your host Dana Parish, and I’m the co-author of the book Chronic and I sit on the advisory board of Bay Area Lyme Foundation. This program offers insightful interviews with scientists, clinicians, patients, and other interesting people. We’re a nonprofit based in Silicon Valley, and thanks to a generous grant that covers a hundred percent of our overhead, all of your donations go directly to our research and prevention programs. For more information about Lyme disease, please visit us@bayarealyme.org.

Dana Parish: Hi, I’m Dana Parish and I’m thrilled today to welcome Dr. Raina McIntyre. Let me tell you a little bit about her. Raina McIntyre, MBBS is head of the Biosecurity program, Kirby Institute, UNSW. She leads research on prevention of epidemic infections, including EPI watch, an AI-driven early warning system for serious outbreaks. She has over 450 peer reviewed publications. She’s received many awards including the SIR Henry Welcome Medal from the Association of Military Surgeons of the US. She was on a US National Academies of Science Engineering Medicine Pandemic Consensus Committee, and she’s a member of W’S Covid 19 Vaccine Composition Technical Advisory Group and WHO Smallpox and Monkeypox Working Group. Has written over 450 publications and I am really pleased to have met you through this new nonprofit that we’re both a part of called BiosafetyNow.org. You know, it’s an honor to be able to learn from you and meet you, and I’d love to talk a little bit about your background and what it means to be a biosecurity expert and an MD and a PhD in your area of expertise.

Raina MacIntyre: I started my career as a medical doctor and I was going to be a cardiologist because I’d done a lot of cardiology, in my specialist physician training and wanted to do cardiology. But I was also interested in epidemiology. I saw an ad for this Master of Applied Epidemiology, which is the Australian Field Epidemiology Training Program, which is a type of hands-on training in outbreak investigation that was pioneered by the US CDC called the Epidemic Intelligence Services. And in some countries when you do it, you get a degree. So, I decided to do that degree and it was quite life-changing for me because it was a new way of learning where you do just short bursts of classroom learning, but then you go out in the field, you investigate outbreaks and you apply the learning that you had in the classroom to practical problems in the field where you’re investigating outbreaks, trying to work out: What is this? Where did it start? How can it be stopped?

Bay Area Lyme Ambassador Shares Her Story

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Guest Blog by Jessica Devine

Bay Area Lyme Foundation is one of the first sources of information I found when I was finally diagnosed. I realized through the years that only a few resources could always be relied upon for accurate information based on scientific research. I also feel connected to BAL because I was bit in California by a tick that carried Lyme, Babesia, Bartonella, Erhlichia, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and more. I have always trusted their information for over a decade now. What they do and continue to do to help this community is something I will always be grateful for.

Creating an uplifting space for Lyme patients has been my dream since my first TV interview when a local station asked me to come on and share my story. Once on camera, I was filled with passion when given the chance to speak about my story, the injustices of Lyme disease treatment and getting a late diagnosis.

From there, people started reaching out to me needing help. I had kind of lost myself in my illness and slowly, through advocacy work, I gained a feeling that I can only describe as finding your true purpose. When I help someone, I have peace.

I found groups to be depressing and I knew the only way to have the group that best served a patient in the ways I needed was to create it myself. I wanted a solution based group that required all of its members to act with kindness. Alongside my own Lyme doctor’s methods, member polls and an accumulation of top resources, I finally was able to create the first Lyme Disease and Co-Infections Directory to cover almost any topic related to these diseases. An easy way for a patient to find the information quickly and learn. I feel the more we understand about these diseases, why we have the symptoms we have and how to help ourselves heal, we become more hopeful and empowered.