Lyme disease Archives - Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Celebrates Department of Defense CDMRP Tick-borne Disease Awardees

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Celebrates Department of Defense CDMRP Tick-borne Disease Awardees

Projects of three awardees to be enabled by Lyme Disease Biobank samples

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif., March 23, 2023—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, announces that two projects it has previously funded have now received Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) Tick-Borne Disease awards. Three of the six recently announced CDMRP awardees will be using biological samples from Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Lyme Disease Biobank to enable their research into diagnostics and therapeutics for tick-borne diseases, including Lyme disease—which infects half a million people each year.

“Government awards like CDMRP help propel much needed research on tick-borne illnesses forward, and, with three diagnostics projects using Biobank samples, we are honored to play a part in making this important research possible,” said Liz Horn, PhD, MBI, Principal Investigator, Lyme Disease Biobank, which provides researchers with access to reliable biological samples to enable research toward better diagnostics and treatments for these complex diseases. “If researchers don’t have access to well-characterized blood samples with robust testing and medical information, they can’t build the necessary research programs to develop better diagnostics, which are urgently needed for these complex diseases,” added Dr. Horn.

Ticktective: Healthy Nutrition Is Crucial for Those with Lyme Disease and Chronic Health Conditions

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Lindsay Christensen, MS, CNS, LDN, A-CFHC, CKNS

Lindsay Christensen is the author of the book, “The Lyme Disease 30-Day Meal Plan: Healthy Recipes and Lifestyle Tips to Ease Symptoms”. She provides nutrition consulting services at the California Center for Functional Medicine and her private practice, Ascent to Health.

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One Lyme Patient’s Challenging Quest to Donate Her Body to Science in Her Final Days

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Spotlight Series

In Puerto Rico, Donating Your Body to Science is Almost Impossible

Luisette Mauras Rodriguez working in the lab at Cornell — Working in the lab at Cornell in 1997

Luisette Mauras Rodriguez is lying in bed at home in Guyana, Puerto Rico, waiting to die. She’s 46 years old, her body ravaged by Lyme, numerous tick-borne coinfections, and a multitude of other hits caused by environmental exposure to toxins like black mold, fungus, mycoplasma, and chikungunya virus. Family members do not understand her illness and laugh at her ‘exaggerations.’ Her husband left her because he fears getting sick and his religious convictions cause him to question the validity of her condition. Her mother, formerly a registered nurse, has abandoned her to her fate. Whenever Luisette gets desperate for help and goes to the ER, they refer her to the psych ward saying her illness is fabricated.

Cornell University and the surrounding woods where she was bitten

A former professional lab technician who worked in pharmaceutical development with US companies like Wyeth, SmithKline Beecham, and IPR Pharmaceuticals, Luisette has one dying wish: to donate her body to the Lyme Disease Biobank (LDB) so that samples from her brain, joints, organs, and tissues will be used to fuel much-needed research into Lyme and tick-borne diseases. She has registered with the National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) in Philadelphia to have her body collected after her death, but as of writing this article, staff there are unable to find any medical professional on the island willing to partner with them to ensure this happens.

“We have been unsuccessful in securing anyone for recovery for the donor located in Puerto Rico. It has been very difficult getting anyone to follow up with us on top of the language barrier. We were trying to give the pathology department at the University time to get back to us but they seem to be very busy. The complexity of the recovery also makes it more difficult as well.” — Wauchita Green, Manager, Organ & Tissue Source Sites, NDRI, The National Disease Research Interchange

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Researcher Validates New Approach to Overcome Challenges of Lyme Disease Diagnosis in the Lab

Artem Rogovskyy, PhD, DVM, receiving the ELA award at LymeAid

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Researcher Validates New Approach to Overcome Challenges of Lyme Disease Diagnosis in the Lab

Using samples from the Lyme Disease Biobank, Raman spectroscopy is identified as a potentially more sensitive test for diagnosing Lyme disease

Portola Valley, CA, February 9, 2023 — Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, today announced results of a laboratory study published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology that identifies Raman spectroscopy as a promising diagnostic approach for Lyme disease, a condition that affects nearly 500,000 new patients annually. Conducted by one of Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Emerging Leader Award winners, Artem Rogovskyy, PhD, DVM, along with researchers from Texas A&M University, the study identified Borrelia infection with 88% accuracy, 85% sensitivity, and 90% specificity using Raman spectroscopy, a light-based test commonly used in chemistry labs, to evaluate human blood samples provided by Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Lyme Disease Biobank.

“By identifying a unique spectrum fingerprint to detect Lyme borreliosis faster, Raman spectroscopy has the potential to diagnose the disease earlier,” said Dr. Rogovskyy, associate professor of Veterinary Pathobiology at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University. “We hope that developing an effective, robust, and rapid diagnostic test will help overcome current challenges in Lyme disease diagnosis.”

The study aims to address the immediate need for more sensitive diagnostics in Lyme disease as the current gold standard diagnostic has been shown to be insensitive in up to 60% of early-stage patients and up to 30% of late-stage patients.

“The lack of an accurate diagnostic test is not only a challenge for clinicians trying to properly diagnose and treat patients, but also makes clinical trials for new treatments difficult,” said Linda Giampa, executive director, Bay Area Lyme Foundation. “Our hope is that new approaches like this one will allow for early detection and treatment of all patients with Lyme disease.”

The Misunderstood Infection that is Wreaking Havoc

Ticktective with Dana Parish and Edward B. Breitschwerdt, DVM, DACVIM, PhD

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Spotlights Series

In this wide-ranging conversation, Dana Parish talks with eminent veterinarian Dr. Edward Breitschwerdt about Bartonella infections, the diseases and symptoms presentations in humans, how the bacteria are transmitted, and how doctors often miss Bartonellosis as the root causes in sudden onset of psychosis, frightening behavioral changes, and inexplicable physical deterioration in humans. Note: This transcribed podcast has been edited for clarity.

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 guest host today, Dana Parish. I’m the co-author of the book Chronic, and I’m on the advisory board of Bay Area Lyme Foundation. This program offers insightful interviews with clinicians, scientists, patients, and other interesting people. We’re a nonprofit foundation based in Silicon Valley, and thanks to a generous grant that covers a hundred percent of our overhead, all your donations go directly to our research and our prevention programs. For more information about Lyme disease, please visit us at us at bayarealyme.org.

Hi, I’m Dana Parish, and I’m so honored to be the guest host today for the Ticktective Podcast on behalf of Bay Area Lyme Foundation, of which I am a very proud advisory board member, and we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Ed Breitschwerdt today. He is the Melanie S. Steele, Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine. He is also an adjunct professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center. And we could read a bio for you that goes on forever because you are so incredibly distinguished. You’re the world’s leading expert, in many people’s opinions on, Bartonella, which is one of the main reasons that we’ve been brought together to talk here today. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this podcast and for being such an incredible ally and champion for this cause and this community and such a diligent, brilliant researcher and personally a friend. I really appreciate you, Ed. Thank you for being here. How did you get into this? A world of Bartonella?

Dr. Edward Breitschwerdt: I became a member of the American Society of Rickettsiology as a veterinary internist trying to understand Rickettsia. I was welcomed by members of the organization and a Rickettsiologist at CDC, Dr. Russ Regnery, at one of the national meetings, presented an abstract. That abstract was to tell us as an audience that they had finally found the organism that caused cat scratch disease. And that organism was a Bartonella that became Bartonella henselae, a bacteria. The thing I always liked about Dr. Regnery is he was a very basic microbiologist and Rickettsiologist, and I was a clinician trying to understand the basic concepts of these bacteria and the diseases they cause. So, the next morning we actually ended up having breakfast at the same table when I asked him how difficult Bartonella was to isolate, and he said: ‘If I could find three feral cats in Raleigh, I could come up with at least one and probably two isolates,’ which really says anybody that is very kind, very benevolent and out there feeding and getting scratched by feral cats, really needs to be careful. So, we knew that fact 30 years ago, when Bartonella henselae was first (discovered). So, the initial research in our laboratory focused on Bartonella and cats.

Treating Complex Chronic Diseases: Novel Therapeutic Options for Lyme Patients

Bay Area Lyme Speaker Series with Steven Harris

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

BAL Happenings Series

Bay Area Lyme Speaker Series San Jose 2022 — Dr Steven Harris speaking at the Bay Area Lyme Speaker Series in San Jose, September 29, 2022

Dr. Steven Harris, a physician specializing in Lyme at Pacific Frontier Medical, was guest speaker as part of our Distinguished Speaker Series. His presentation on the complexity of tick-borne diseases is transcribed below to share his invaluable insights into novel treatment options for those living with chronic/persistent Lyme and other intractable infections that severely curtail patients’ quality of life, bringing hope and restoring health to many. Note: This transcribed presentation has been edited for clarity.

What is “Precision Medicine”?

“The concept of precision medicine, which is a growing area, is where we look at an individual and try to create a tailored plan for that person. I think many doctors wish that we could have a ‘cookbook’ approach to medicine that would work for our patients. But unfortunately, that approach doesn’t work. Luckily, here in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are doctors offering precision medicine including Dr. Sunjya Schweig in Berkeley, Dr. Christine Green, with us at Pacific Frontier Medical, and Dr. Eric Gordon, at Gordon Medical Associates in Marin and others. And thankfully, we have Stanford and UCSF (our local medical centers) that we work peripherally with. In addition, the Open Medicine Foundation is making great strides in understanding illness and Dr. Mike Snyder’s group at Stanford who are working on multi omics for chronic fatigue that track an individual patient’s data.

“These doctors are working in their own fields, not necessarily just tick-borne diseases, but our work overlaps. For example, the Snyder Lab multi-omic study involves genomics, epigenomics, metabolomics, where they are looking at tons of data and assimilating a lot of this different data to try to create treatment plans that work for the individual, because of the fact that a ‘cookbook’ approach doesn’t work for this group of chronic complex patients. For example, we look at someone’s multi-ome and the parts that make them up, including their microbiome, epigenome among many others, which is becoming a bigger and more exciting field. One of the practical aspects we try to determine is how to address an individual’s level of inflammation, the diversity of their personal bacterial flora, and how to help compensate for any deficiencies—or over abundances—that help contribute to disease.

Ticktective with Dana Parish: All About Kids with Lyme, PANS, Mold Illness

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Charlotte Mao, MD

Dr. Charlotte Mao is a pediatric infectious diseases (ID) physician with special focus on Lyme disease and associated infections. She received her medical degree at Harvard Medical School and did her pediatric and infectious disease training at Boston Children’s Hospital. Ticktective Video and Podcast Editor: Kiva Schweig.

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New Study Finds American Dog Tick Populations Expanding into Colorado, and Identifies Rocky Mountain Wood Ticks in 5 More Counties Than Documented by CDC

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New Study Finds American Dog Tick Populations Expanding into Colorado, and Identifies Rocky Mountain Wood Ticks in 5 More Counties Than Documented by CDC

Citizen scientists contributing to Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Free Tick Testing program assist in identifying ticks capable of carrying disease in Colorado

Portola Valley, CA, October 25, 2022—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, today announced results of a study published in the November issue of the peer-reviewed journal Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases demonstrating that ticks capable of carrying diseases, including Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Colorado tick fever and the neurotoxin that causes tick-borne paralysis, pose an emerging threat in Colorado. The results show American dog ticks are very much present in 16 counties in Colorado, where they were not previously identified by the CDC, and Rocky Mountain wood ticks are found in 38 of the 64 Colorado counties, whereas they had only been identified in 33 previously. The study leveraged several sources for the study, including ticks collected by citizen scientists as part of a free tick testing program offered by the Bay Area Lyme Foundation.

“The critical takeaway from this study is that Coloradans need to take preventative measures against ticks when outdoors, such as tick checks, and doctors should be more vigilant for symptoms of tick-borne diseases including those carried by Rocky Mountain wood ticks and American dog ticks,” said Linda Giampa, executive director, Bay Area Lyme Foundation. “This ecology study illustrates the power of leveraging citizen science, and we are grateful for the more than 20,000 ticks that were submitted to our national program and made this study possible.”

Conducted by researchers from Colorado State University and funded by the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, the study aimed to quantify the current county-level distribution of Rocky Mountain wood ticks, Dermacentor andersoni, and American dog ticks, Dermacentor variabilis. The study evaluated data from ticks collected by citizen scientists and evaluated at Northern Arizona University as part of Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s Free Tick Testing program, distribution data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, veterinary surveillance at Oklahoma State University, and literature data.

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Offers $150,000 Grant for Emerging Leaders in Lyme Disease Research

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Offers $150,000 Grant for Emerging Leaders in Lyme Disease Research

Annual award seeks to attract innovative researchers with a new approach to overcome the challenges of tick-borne diseases

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif., October 19, 2022—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, is announcing a call for entries for their 2023 Emerging Leader Awards (ELA), which aim to recognize both established and up-and-coming researchers bringing new approaches and creative thinking to the field of Lyme disease. This year, the Foundation has increased the ELA award to $150,000 for researchers in academia or the private sector who are at the post-doctoral level through associate professor level.

While applicants must have a defined approach to improving diagnostics and therapeutics for Lyme disease, the grants are open to those who have previously worked in Lyme disease research as well as researchers from other therapeutic areas. Applications will be accepted through February 15, 2023 at 11:59pm, Pacific Time. The full criteria and application for this award can be found at https://www.bayarealyme.org/our-research/emerging-leader-award/.

“Despite modest increases in government funding, there is still a significant need for ‘out of the box’ ideas pulled from proven scientific approaches in other therapeutic areas,” said Wendy Adams, research grant director Bay Area Lyme Foundation. “We fund innovative scientifically-sound research and are seeking driven, rigorous scientists who can help make progress towards developing accurate diagnostic tests and effective therapeutics for various stages of the disease.”

The Emerging Leader Award is designed to support research that will increase the scope of investigation in Lyme disease and help develop better diagnostics and treatments. Bay Area Lyme Foundation encourages researchers to explore novel, scientifically well-founded concepts with potential utility toward that goal. Many ELA recipients have subsequently received grants from other groups including the NIH, as well as continued support from Bay Area Lyme Foundation. The efforts funded by this award are required to generate initial proof of concept within 12-24 months and requires applicants to demonstrate professional and scientific leadership in the biomedical sciences and a strong supporting scientific rationale.

Ticktective with Dana Parish: The Misunderstood Infection That Is Wreaking Havoc

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Edward B. Breitschwerdt, DVM, DACVIM, PhD

Dr. Edward B. Breitschwerdt is the Melanie S. Steele professor of medicine and infectious diseases at North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine. He is also an adjunct professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center, and Diplomate, American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. Ticktective Video and Podcast Editor: Kiva Schweig. Click here for this podcast transcript.

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