Blog - Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Pathogens & Persistence: The Chronic Disease Drivers

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Dr. Steven Phillips

Steven E. Phillips, MD, is a Yale-trained expert on zoonotic infections and coauthor of the book CHRONIC. He specializes in treating medicine’s most complex cases, which include Lyme & other vector-borne disease and Long COVID. Additionally, he has served as an expert for the states of CT, NY, RI, and VT, providing testimony during their respective public hearings, which resulted in changes to existing healthcare laws. Dr. Phillips has been a longstanding public face of the Lyme pandemic. He is currently spearheading a drug development effort to bring the public a durable, effective treatment for some of these infections, which will hopefully change how we treat a range of rheumatologic and neurologic illnesses. Dr. Phillips also sits on the Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s scientific advisory board.

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Toxic Load: Healing from Tick-borne Disease and Autoimmune Illness

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL “Quick Bites” Series

“If you have an autoimmune disease, our allopathic system does not have great answers that are solution-based or root cause-based to chronic complex illness.”

– Jill Carnahan, MD

In this edition of our Ticktective video and podcast series, Dana Parish sits down with Jill Carnahan, MD, a functional medicine doctor specializing in Lyme disease, tick-borne illnesses, mold toxicity, and other complex chronic health issues. Carnahan discusses her background growing up on a farm and how it influenced her approach to medicine. She shares her experience being diagnosed with breast cancer and the potential environmental factors, such as atrazine, that may have contributed to it. Carnahan talks about her cancer treatment and her belief in finding and addressing root causes in medicine. She then discusses her expertise in Lyme and tick-borne diseases, explaining how she evaluates and treats these conditions. She emphasizes the need for a clinical diagnosis of Lyme disease due to the limitations of mainstream tests. Carnahan also sheds light on the connection between mold exposure and chronic illness, including dementia and psychiatric disorders. She provides insights into testing, detoxification, and treatment strategies for mold-related illnesses. The interview concludes with information about connecting with Dr. Carnahan’s clinic, her book, and her documentary.

Understanding Infection-associated Chronic Illness: How the Immune System Responds to Persistent Infection

Distinguished Speaker Series with Michal Tal, PhD

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Distinguished Speaker Series Transcript

“I want to leave you with hope. I think we’re going to be unstoppable because I think that these are solvable problems. These are answerable questions. I think that there are already a lot of existing tools in immunology that just need to be brought into the fight, and we can change this.”

– Michal Caspi Tal, PhD

Michal Caspi Tal: In the chronic illness world, I think that there is something about hope with a capital ‘H’ that is precious. I think it always has to be. I want to talk a little bit about what my lab is doing, where I think we could go in the future and the hope that I have for how we move forward, how we solve this, and how we change this for those who come after us. So, I’ll tell you a little bit about some of the recent things that have come out of the lab, what the lab is working on now, and where we want to go.

New Study Shows How Borrelia burgdorferi Evades the Immune System

Recently, we published a study in collaboration with Hanna Ollila’s lab where we compared people who’ve had Lyme and have had a diagnosis of Lyme versus people who’ve never had a diagnosis of Lyme. We found a genetic difference in a sweat protein that nobody—including me—had ever thought about before. We tested it against the bacteria in our lab, and we saw that it had a huge effect; we tested it in mice, and it had a huge effect. So that’s really exciting. We had another paper that came online yesterday that is one of these last papers from my postdoctoral work over at Stanford, where we actually managed to figure out some of how Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme, manages to evade immune clearance.

Any respectable pathogen that can establish a persistent infection needs to figure out your immune system to the point that it can evade it. The fact that it has persisted means that it was able to evade your immune clearance. And so, I got to that from a very interesting direction working on immune regulation, trying to understand these brakes on the immune response and how they impact the response to infection. The immune system has the power to kill you and obviously, nobody has any incentive for that to happen. So, there are a lot of mechanisms in place to put brakes on the immune system and reign it in. One of the huge developments in cancer over the last two decades has been reevaluating the question: can we take those brakes off? So in my postdoc, I was studying a particular checkpoint where this was turning into an exciting immuno-oncology target, and I said, ‘I want to look at how this checkpoint is used in infection.’ I realized that this checkpoint was being used to help you survive an acute infection, but created a vulnerability for pathogens to evade immune clearance and establish chronic infection much like it allows cancer cells to evade immune clearance. In an amazing collaboration with Irv Weissman, Balyn Zaro, and Jenifer Coburn we realized that the bacteria that cause Lyme disease manipulate this brake and that’s how I became fascinated with Lyme. But I also became concerned about turning off this brake in cancer patients because I was concerned about what would happen if you used this on cancer patients during an active infection. Indeed, the clinical trials on this drug were ended due to increased death from infection, and I wish it hadn’t been tested during a worldwide pandemic.

The Toxic Truth: Mold, Lyme, and Helping Gwyneth Paltrow Get Well

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Mike Rubino

Michael is an air quality expert, author, and founder of HomeCleanse, a go-to source for information, services, and products to create healthier living through cleaner indoor air. A specialist in working with people who are immunocompromised or have acute and sustained reactions to mold exposure, Michael’s scientific understanding has enabled him to create change, via alternative remediation.

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Unlocking the Mysteries of Tick-borne Infections: Lyme Disease Biobank’s Tissue Collection Program Drives Research Momentum

Kirsten Stein and the Lyme Disease Biobank

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Leading the Way Series

“My family knows that after I die, my tissues will be donated to Lyme Disease Biobank to provide researchers with the vital material they need to solve this horrible disease. I urge anyone with chronic/persistent Lyme to register with NDRI today. Let’s end this suffering together.”

-Kirsten Stein, Lyme Advocate

Lyme Disease Biobank^®, led by Liz Horn, PhD, MBI, is central to Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s 10-year search for answers to Lyme’s most intractable questions and is the most important program in the Foundation’s mission to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure.

The original Lyme Disease Biobank sample collection launched in 2014 focused on obtaining blood, urine, and serum samples from patients with early/acute Lyme disease. Once this program had been fully established, the Lyme Disease Biobank team explored adding tissue samples to the Biobank. Tissue samples could help researchers expand their investigations beyond the early stage of infection into how chronic/persistent Lyme and other tick-borne diseases impact the central nervous system, joints, and organs of Lyme patients.

With the tissue bank objectives defined, the Biobank connected with specialist organizations to provide the critical support needed to support sample collection and make the development of a tissue bank a reality.

Post-Mortem Tissue Collection Planning

Lyme Disease Biobank established a key partnership with the nonprofit National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) to provide logistics for post-mortem tissue collection for the new tissue program. The Biobank also partnered with MyLymeData.org, allowing Lyme patients registered with the Biobank to link their MyLymeData profile to their tissue donation if desired. Bringing these two resources together provides for the organizing and recovery of post-mortem (after death) tissue. It ensures samples include redacted (removes identifying information) detailed patient medical histories—an important nuance for Lyme disease researchers.

“Although it is an emotional and difficult idea for anyone to plan to donate parts of their body to science after they have died, we believe that this decision is an important way for Lyme patients to change the course of Lyme disease research. Having access to tissues from the brain, heart, joints, and central nervous system of Lyme patients allows researchers to prove unequivocally that Lyme is present in tissue and contributes to patient suffering,” explains Linda Giampa, Executive Director, Bay Area Lyme Foundation and board member of Lyme Disease Biobank.

Matt Kaeberlein, Rapamycin, and the Dog Aging Project: What Animals Can Teach Us About Aging Better

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL “Quick Bites” Series

In scientific exploration, few fields captivate the imagination quite like the study of aging. It’s a universal process affecting all living beings, yet its mechanisms remain elusive and its implications profound. Recently, a spotlight has been cast on aging research through initiatives like the Dog Aging Project, spearheaded by Dr. Matt Kaeberlein. This ambitious endeavor aims not only to understand the biological underpinnings of aging in dogs but also to glean insights that could potentially enhance human longevity. At the forefront of this research is rapamycin, a drug with promising anti-aging properties. In our latest Ticktective interview, Dana Parish delves into the intricacies of this groundbreaking project with Dr. Kaeberlein and learns what animals, particularly dogs, can teach us about aging better.

“Investing in research on aging and companion animal health can pave the way for longer, healthier lives for both humans and animals.”

– Matt Kaeberlein

Toxic Load: Healing from Tick-borne Disease, Long Covid, Mold, & Bad Food

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Jill Carnahan, MD

Jill Carnahan, MD, is a functional medicine doctor with a huge media presence, board-certified in Family Medicine and Integrative Holistic Medicine. She is the Medical Director of Flatiron Functional Medicine, a sought-after practice with a broad range of clinical services. As a survivor of breast cancer, Crohn’s disease, and toxic mold illness she brings a unique perspective to treating patients in the midst of complex and chronic illness. Her clinic specializes in searching for the underlying triggers that contribute to illness through cutting-edge lab testing and tailoring the intervention to specific needs.

Featured in People magazine, Shape, Parade, Forbes, MindBodyGreen, First for Women, Townsend Newsletter, and The Huffington Post as well as seen on NBC News and Health segments with Joan Lunden, Dr. Jill is a media must-have. Her YouTube channel and podcast features live interviews with the healthcare world’s most respected names.

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Bay Area Lyme Foundation Selects National Winner of the 2024 Emerging Leader Award for Research of Combination Therapies to Treat Chronic Lyme Disease

Trever Smith, PhD winner of Emerging Leader Award

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Selects National Winner of the 2024 Emerging Leader Award for Research of Combination Therapies to Treat Chronic Lyme Disease

Winner Trever Smith, of Tufts University, will collect novel therapeutic data to develop a first-of-its-kind drug interaction compendium for Lyme Disease

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif., August 1, 2024—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, announces the recipient of the 2024 Emerging Leader Award (ELA), which is designed to support new and innovative research and aims to attract aspiring new scientific talent to the field of Lyme. This year’s winner, Trever Smith, PhD, Research Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts University School of Medicine, will receive $150,000 for his work to identify precise treatment combinations that more effectively target persistent Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb) infection in persistent Lyme patients. For this research, Dr. Smith intends to develop a first-of-its-kind drug interaction compendium to help prioritize the most effective combinations for testing in pre-clinical models of Lyme disease. To do so, Dr. Smith will leverage techniques he and other researchers use to identify effective drug combinations against other infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, and translate them for Bb. Due to the difficulty in diagnosing and treating Lyme disease, it is estimated that over two million patients currently suffer from the debilitating later-stage symptoms of persistent Lyme in the US, and there are currently no FDA-approved treatments for the persistent symptoms of Lyme disease.

“While combination therapies to treat chronic Lyme have shown promise in early research and are widely used with success in other disease areas, the vast majority of chronic Lyme patients are not able to benefit from combination therapies,” said Wendy Adams, research grant director, Bay Area Lyme Foundation. “Dr. Smith’s research aims to change this, as it builds on his previous research success in tuberculosis to bring the hope of combination therapies for Lyme to the forefront and seeks to give clinicians and researchers a better understanding of the advantages of combining current FDA-approved treatments in Lyme disease.”

Long COVID: What We Have Learned About Chronic Illness from the Front Lines

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Spotlights Series

In this episode of Ticktective, Dana Parish interviews David Putrino, PhD, about the new Cohen Center for Recovery From Complex Chronic Illnesses at Mount Sinai which will focus on the treatment and study of Long COVID, chronic Lyme, and ME/CFS. Dr. Putrino begins by stressing the importance of complete assessment and individualized treatment for complex chronic conditions. He emphasizes the need for improved medical student and provider education to better understand and treat these illnesses.

“Death is not the only serious health outcome from COVID. An acute SARS-CoV-2 infection can absolutely rob you of your previous life as effectively as a severe infection that ends in death as anything else.”

– David Putrino

Putrino addresses the early COVID epidemic and the eventual identification of Long COVID. He discusses Long COVID’s viral persistence and inflammation and therapeutic approaches targeting endothelial dysfunction and platelet hyperactivation. The medical profession’s intractable denial and skepticism concerning these chronic diseases and the need for new diagnostic tools and research funding are also addressed.

Processed Food, Nutrition, Modern Medicine and Chronic Disease

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

David Perlmutter, MD, FACN

David Perlmutter, MD, FACN, is a board-certified neurologist, Fellow of the American College of Nutrition, and five-time New York Times bestselling author. He is recognized internationally as a leader in the field of nutritional influences in neurological disorders. He serves as a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and has published extensively in peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Archives of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and The Journal of Applied Nutrition. In addition, he is a frequent lecturer at symposia sponsored by institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, Columbia University, Scripps Institute, New York University, and Harvard University and serves as an Associate Professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Perlmutter’s books have been published in 32 languages and include the #1 New York Times bestseller Grain Brain, The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs and Sugar, with over 1 million copies in print. Other New York Times bestsellers include Brain Maker, The Grain Brain Cookbook, The Grain Brain Whole Life Plan, and Brain Wash, co-written with Austin Perlmutter, M.D. He is the editor of The Microbiome and the Brain authored by top experts in the field and published in December 2019 by CRC Press. His latest New York Times bestselling book, Drop Acid, focuses on the pivotal role of uric acid in metabolic diseases and was published in February 2022.

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