On May 27th, Lia Gaertner, a member of our science committee, and her husband, Sunjya Schweig, MD, discussed tick-borne disease prevention and Lyme disease treatments on KTVU Fox News in San Francisco. Many thanks to Lia and Sunjya for their valuable help with our awareness and education programs.
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Media Contact:
Tara DiMilia, 908-947-0500, tara.dimilia@TMstrat.com
American Ninja Warrior Elet Hall Educates about Lyme Disease Risks
Growing issue of Lyme disease in California prompts Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education (AEOE) to provide Lyme education at statewide conference
Silicon Valley, CA, May 9, 2016 — Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading non-profit funder and advocate of innovative Lyme disease research in the US, today announced that Elet Hall, ambassador for the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, and Jo Ellis, director, education outreach, Bay Area Lyme Foundation helped raise awareness about Lyme disease and tick-borne illnesses among California Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education (AEOE) conference attendees. Attendees included individuals who work in museums, zoos, nature centers, and state and national parks as well as environmental and outdoor educators who help instill an understanding of nature to individuals of all ages, from California and neighboring states.
May is Lyme Awareness month. And it is indeed time to be aware. Thanks to El Niño, it’s a wetter Spring than we’ve had in several years. That means we have lots of green grass, damp leaf litter, and overgrown trails and paths. It also means the ticks are out. And early spring means nymph season — these nymphs are young ticks, not much bigger than a poppy seed … the kind that are easy to miss with a quick glance.
The good news is that ticks can’t fly, jump, or even run. But they do “quest” — they hang out on leaves, blades of grass, and branches, tiny legs poised to grab onto a warm body passing by. Ticks need to feed in order to progress to the next life stage and perching ready to grab a free ride (and meal!) on an unwitting passerby is how they ensure their survival.
When hiking or biking in the woods, if you keep to the center of the trail and avoid bushwhacking and brushing up against high grasses or other vegetation, your risk of picking up a parasitic passenger is pretty low. Once you leave the trail for a pit stop, however, the risk rises exponentially. Ticks are carried by deer and other small mammals that also like to use the trails so the highest concentration of ticks is often close to trails.
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Media Contact:
Tara DiMilia, 908-947-0500, tara.dimilia@TMstrat.com
Experts Hack for Lyme Disease Solutions in Boston and Berkeley
Bay Area Lyme Foundation Supports the First Hackathon for Lyme Disease to Inspire Innovation
Silicon Valley, CA, April 18, 2016— To inspire innovation to help solve the challenges of Lyme disease, Bay Area Lyme Foundation, collaborating with the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network’s Dean Center for Tick Borne Illness, Harvard Medical School Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, MIT Hacking Medicine, University of California, Berkeley, and the Veterans Affairs Center for Innovation, is supporting Lyme Innovation, the first ever Hackathon for Lyme disease, a potentially devastating condition newly infecting 329,000 people each year. Scientists, clinicians, researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors from both U.S. coasts participated in this innovative event, which kicked off this weekend, and will continue in Cambridge June 17 – 19, at the Microsoft Nerd Center.
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Media Contact:
Tara DiMilia, 908-947-0500, tara.dimilia@TMstrat.com
California Strains of Lyme Bacteria May Survive Antibiotic Treatment, According to New Study
This new study funded by Bay Area Lyme Foundation identifies 20 FDA-approved compounds that are more effective in inhibiting persistent Lyme bacteria than standard treatment
Silicon Valley, CA, April 6, 2016—A laboratory study published today, funded by the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, is the first study to demonstrate that strains of Lyme bacteria present in California ticks are able to form persister bacteria, which do not respond well to treatment. The study is also the first to identify FDA-approved therapies that may be more effective in inhibiting these specific strains of persister bacteria in the lab than doxycycline, the most commonly prescribed treatment for Lyme disease. The study was conducted by Stanford School of Medicine researchers and published in the Open Access publication Drug Design, Development and Therapy. View full study here: http://www.dovepress.com/articles.php?article_id=26319
On March 2nd, Bay Area Lyme again hosted another of its Speaker Series events. These popular salon-style events allow community members to come together in an intimate forum to share stories and hear directly from experts in the field.
The featured speakers this time were Dr. Christine Green, MD, a recognized leader in Lyme disease diagnosis and treatment and Allie Cashel, author of Suffering the Silence: Chronic Lyme Disease in an Age of Denial. Both shared personal and professional perspectives on the challenges of diagnosing Lyme disease.
Dr. Ben Beard, PhD, Chief Bacterial Diseases Branch at the CDC, visited with Bay Area Lyme and invited guests as part of the foundation’s ongoing speaker series. This donor-sponsored forum brings together researchers and other experts in an intimate forum for topical discussions with community members. Past events have included Emerging Leader Award winners, clinicians, and patient advocates.
The next event, on Wednesday, March 2, will feature Dr. Christine Green, Director of Education for ILADS, and Allie Cashel, author of Suffering the Silence: Chronic Lyme Disease in an Age of Denial.
For more information, see Speaker Series.
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As Chief of the CDC’s Bacterial Diseases Branch, Division of Vector-Borne Diseases in Fort Collins, Colorado, Dr. Beard coordinates CDC’s programs on Lyme disease, plague, and tularemia. His scientific interests include public health and the biology, ecology, and genetics of insect-borne diseases and vectors. More recently, he has been extensively involved in the CDC’s work to understand and mitigate the potential impact of climate variability and change on infectious disease ecology. He shared the CDC’s concerns about the expanding disease burden and distribution of Lyme and affirmed the importance of attracting new research interest and efforts focused on Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections.
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Media Contact:
Tara DiMilia, 908-947-0500, tara.dimilia@TMstrat.com
Bay Area Lyme Foundation Offers Free Tick Testing Nationwide
Free Tick Testing Initiative Is First In The Nation and Aims to Map Tick-borne Diseases Across the U.S. Through Crowd-sourcing
Silicon Valley, CA, February 16, 2016 — Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading nonprofit funder of innovative Lyme disease research in the US, today announced that the Foundation is the first to offer free tick testing for residents of the U.S. Testing is available through a partnership with Nate Nieto, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University and his lab. Bay Area Lyme Foundation hopes to use this crowd-sourced data as a vehicle for gaining a greater understanding of the geography of tick-borne diseases in the U.S. If successful in accumulating data, it will be the first crowd-sourced study of its kind.
by Lia Gaertner, BAL Science Committee
Some weeks ago, two members of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation Science Committee, Wendy Adams and Lia Gaertner, attended a leadership symposium in Washington, DC, sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and entitled, “Innovations-X: Rising Above the Politics for Progress in Science.” The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society, with more than 125,000 individual and institutional members, and the publisher of Science magazine. Its mission is “to advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people.” At this event, there were three “wicked problems” discussed over two days: climate change, global/mobile health, and Lyme disease. This blog, written by Lia Gaertner, will focus only on the Lyme portion of the conference.
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Media Contact:
Tara DiMilia, 908-947-0500, tara.dimilia@TMstrat.com
The Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation Grants $6.5 Million to
Bay Area Lyme Foundation
Gift is part of the largest private donation for Lyme disease research—100% of grant will go directly to Lyme disease research programs.
SILICON VALLEY, California, December 17, 2015 –The Bay Area Lyme Foundation today announced that it received a $6.5 million grant from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, the largest private donation ever given to Lyme disease research. The gift will support Bay Area Lyme’s mission of using new scientific research and innovations to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure.
“I was shocked to learn how many people suffer from Lyme disease in silence, and how much we still need to do to raise awareness and help find a cure,” said Alex Cohen, President of the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation. “This gift is incredibly personal to me as I have experienced, first-hand, the chronic and debilitating side effects of this relatively unknown disease. We share Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s desire to find a cure for Lyme disease and hope that this gift will help pave the way to that important work.”