Lyme disease Archives - Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Bay Area Lyme’s November 2021 Speaker Series Event: Bringing Hope and Support to Lyme Patients in San Diego

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Happenings Series

Why is the human immune system so complicated? Why are Lyme and tick-borne diseases so challenging for medical scientists to understand and for doctors to treat? And what is happening in the world of Lyme disease research that may offer hope to patients suffering from the effects of Lyme and TBDs on their continually assaulted immune systems?

On November 3, Bay Area Lyme Foundation and Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute jointly hosted an audience of physicians, scientists, patients, supporting family members, and medical providers in La Jolla, CA, to hear a panel of distinguished speakers address the subject of how the human immune system responds to the bacterial or viral assault of a tick-borne infection.

The San Diego event was part of Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s ongoing Distinguished Speaker Series. The Speaker Series format brings together a panel of distinguished individuals, typically including a researcher, a physician, and a Lyme patient advocate. By giving varied perspectives on topics relevant to Lyme and tick-borne diseases (TBDs), Bay Area Lyme provides a platform for the discussion of new scientific discoveries and other developments relevant to Lyme. The series also fosters community-building for patients seeking answers to the challenges of this debilitating disease.

Part of this session’s discussion explored the frustration experienced by countless Lyme patients that most medical providers and physicians are so poorly educated regarding Lyme and TBDs. “They don’t test for all types of TBDs, don’t agree on treatments, aren’t trained to recognize or treat heart problems caused by TBDs, and over-prescribe powerful immune suppressants which can be deadly for TBD patients,” criticized David Haney, PhD, biochemist, patient advocate and panelist. “San Diego physicians are under the mistaken impression that there is no Lyme disease in California, but it has been established in the state since the 1970s. People also travel, and a tick-borne infection is more than just Borrelia burgdorferi. This has been proven in multiple studies,” he added. “Academic studies show that Babesia duncani and several species of tick-borne Borrelia are more prevalent in the West than the East.”

“Traditional healthcare needs to learn to diagnose and treat tick-borne diseases,“

– David Haney, PhD

Citizen Scientist Study Fuels Launch of First Series of Interactive U.S. County Maps of Ticks Carrying Diseases

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Citizen Scientist Study Fuels Launch of First Series of Interactive U.S. County Maps of Ticks Carrying Diseases

– Study finds ticks carrying disease-causing bacteria in 116 counties where they have not been previously documented by CDC –

PORTOLA VALLEY, CA, October 20, 2021—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading nonprofit funder of innovative Lyme disease research in the U.S., today announced the launch of interactive national tick maps of U.S. counties based on data published in mSphere, a multidisciplinary open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The new data identify Ixodes ticks carrying disease-causing pathogens in 116 counties which were not previously identified by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

“The area known to harbor disease-carrying ticks continues to expand, and we hope people across the US will use these interactive maps to learn more about the risks for their hometowns, their family’s residences and vacation spots,” said Linda Giampa, executive director, Bay Area Lyme Foundation. “The citizen scientists contributing to this study allowed the country’s collective tick knowledge to advance further than even the CDC could do at this time. Gaining the support of citizen scientists allowed us to collect from many counties across the country where ticks are not usually collected and tested, or they are not tested for these pathogens.”

Tick-borne Diseases, PANS/PANDAS and Resulting Pediatric Anxiety and Eating Disorders

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Daniel Kinderlehrer, MD, author of Recovery From Lyme Disease: The Integrative Medicine Guide to the Diagnosis and Treatment of Tick-Borne Illness

Daniel Kinderlehrer, MD is the author of Recovery from Lyme Disease: The Integrative Medicine Guide to the Diagnosis and Treatment of Tick-Borne Illness. He is also the author of several review articles in medical journals and the Lyme Times. Dr. Kinderlehrer attended Tufts Medical School and is an internal medicine physician. He co-founded the New England Center for Holistic Medicine and has a private integrative medicine practice in Denver, Colorado, where he treats patients with tick-borne illnesses.

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Gratitude of a Celebrity, Business Woman, Author, Wife and Mom

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Ally Hilfiger, Lyme advocate and author of her memoir “Bite Me”

Ally Hilfiger, film producer, fashion designer, businesswoman, reality TV star, daughter of fashion mogul Tommy Hilfiger, and author of the book “Bite Me” shares her personal experience with tick-borne diseases and her path to healing.

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How Do You Build a Biobank to Solve the Problem of Lyme Disease? Literally – One Tick Bite at a Time

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Science is all about asking questions and finding answers. It attracts the curious, the driven, the questioners and fact seekers—the people who won’t accept the status quo and who are always pushing to learn more. If we keep asking science the right questions, we’re bound to get to the right answers eventually. It’s simple, right?

Unfortunately, not. As with everything about Lyme disease the answers to the questions are not so simple. Lyme is a complicated, nuanced disease with many challenging attributes, so much so that even the most experienced clinicians and medical researchers struggle to understand the many ways the infection impacts the human body. So, if you’re going to try and solve the puzzle of Lyme disease, where is the best place to start? How do you get all the pieces in place to move the needle to solve the complexity of this disease?

Enter Bay Area Lyme Foundation and Principal Investigator, Liz Horn PhD, MBI. When they were planning this project, they asked research scientists in the field of Lyme disease what were their big obstacles to finding out more about Lyme? What did scientists need so that they could start chipping away at the conundrum of this horrible disease?

The Wearable Project: How Can Wearables Be Used in Diagnosing and Studying Lyme Disease?

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Dr. Snyder, Stanford professor and author of the book: "Genomics and Personalized Medicine: What Everyone Needs to Know".

Guest host, Wendy Adams, Bay Area Lyme grant director, interviews Dr. Michael Snyder, Stanford W. Ascherman Professor and Chair, Department of Genetics Director, Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine Stanford University. Dr. Snyder is a major participant in the ENCODE project, the public research project that aims to identify functional elements of the human genome. He authored the book: Genomics and Personalized Medicine: What Everyone Needs to Know. He is also a cofounder and a board member of several biotechnology companies.

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Bay Area Lyme Foundation Selects National Winners of the 2021 Emerging Leader Awards to Advance Research for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Lyme Disease

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:
Tara DiMilia, 908-947-0500, tara.dimilia@TMstrat.com

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Selects National Winners of the 2021 Emerging Leader Awards to Advance Research for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Lyme Disease

Brandon Jutras, PhD of Virginia Tech, Nitya Ramadoss, PhD of Stanford University and Michael P. Rout, PhD of The Rockefeller University are this year’s recipients

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif., July 6th, 2021—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the U.S., announces the recipients of the 2021 Emerging Leader Awards (ELA), which are designed to support promising scientists who represent the future of Lyme disease research leadership. Michael P. Rout, PhD of The Rockefeller University will receive $250,000 for his work with nanobodies to develop a sensitive point-of-care diagnostic. Brandon Jutras, PhD of Virginia Tech and Nitya Ramadoss, PhD of Stanford University will each receive $100,000 toward the development of a novel direct-detection diagnostic approach for Lyme disease and a novel therapeutic based on B-cell mapping, respectively. Lyme disease is a potentially disabling infection diagnosed in nearly half a million Americans each year.

“As there is not a diagnosis or treatment that works for all patients, there is a critical need to develop direct-detection diagnostics as well as treatments that can prevent the development of persistent Lyme disease, and we are excited to support these novel approaches that have shown success in other areas,” said Linda Giampa, executive director, Bay Area Lyme Foundation.

Two of the award winners will utilize biological samples from the Lyme Disease Biobank, a program of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, to collect well-characterized human tissue, blood and urine specimens to accelerate research of Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections.

The Mysterious History of Tick-borne Diseases and How We Can Stem the Epidemic

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Kris Newby, author of "Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons", senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary, "Under Our Skin"

Kris Newby, author of Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary, Under Our Skin, discusses her Lyme history, her extensive research into tick-borne diseases in the USA and where we find ourselves today in this new pandemic world.

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Ticks Carrying Disease Found to Be Abundant in Beach Areas, Similar to Woodlands, According to New Study

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:
Tara DiMilia, 908-947-0500, tara.dimilia@TMstrat.com

Ticks Carrying Disease Found to Be Abundant in Beach Areas, Similar to Woodlands, According to New Study

Study Funded by Bay Area Lyme Foundation Also Shows Ticks in Northern California Carry a Diversity of Disease-causing Bacteria at Higher Rates Than Previously Reported

Portola Valley, CA, April 23, 2021—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, today announced results of a study demonstrating that adult Western black-legged ticks (Ixodes pacificus) carrying Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, were found in beach areas at equal rates to the woodland habitats in parts of northwestern California. Further, researchers, who were testing ticks for up to 5 species of tick-borne bacteria, found that the collective infection rate of all species was as high as 31% in at least one area, which offers a different perspective from previous studies that tested for a single species of bacteria in a specific area or areas. Conducted by researchers at Colorado State University, Northern Arizona State University and Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), and published in the June issue of the peer-reviewed journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology (AEM), the research points to the need for greater education for both the community at large and healthcare providers about the risks of tick-borne disease.

“The high rate of disease-carrying ticks in the coastal chaparral was really surprising to us. And when looking at all the tick-borne pathogens simultaneously, it makes you rethink the local disease risk,” said Lead Author Daniel Salkeld, PhD, Colorado State University. “Previously, we, along with other researchers, may have missed the big picture when we focused our attention on investigating the risk of one pathogen at a time. Now, we have a new imperative to look at the collective risk of all tick-borne pathogens in an area.”

First Female US Air Force Thunderbird Pilot and Her Fiercest Battle Yet

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Col. Nicole Malachowski, Former Deputy Director for US Air Force Readiness and Training for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, and Bay Area Lyme Foundation Ambassador

Col. Nicole Malachowski, first female Thunderbird pilot, National Women’s Hall of Famer, and Former Deputy Director for US Air Force Readiness and Training for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and Bay Area Lyme Foundation Ambassador shares her challenging journey from military fighter to Lyme warrior.

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