Lyme treatment Archives - Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Award-Winning Short-Form YouTube Series ‘Girl at a Bar’ Depicts Challenges of Living with Chronic Lyme

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Bay Area Lyme Spotlights Series

“I hope people with Lyme can see themselves on screen and they resonate with it.”

– Tracy Mulholland

We sat down with Tracy Mulholland, actress, writer, producer, and Lyme patient, who wrote, produced, and stars in the award-winning short-form series Girl at a Bar, made possible by a grant from Bay Area Lyme Foundation. The short-form series, now available on YouTube, aims to provide an entertaining, accessible narrative to raise awareness about Lyme. Tracy hopes it will resonate with those living with chronic conditions and spark more conversations and content about these experiences. We discuss Tracy’s personal story as the inspiration behind the show and how the series explores challenges relevant not only to people navigating chronic illness but also to life in general. Conversation topics include:

How the show is inspired by the creator’s own experiences with Lyme disease, including the social isolation and impacts on relationships that can occur during chronic illness.
An exploration around themes of identity, vulnerability, and empathy, drawing parallels to other chronic and invisible illnesses beyond Lyme.
In addition to the short-form series, Tracy is launching a related spin-off podcast series where others are challenged to push their comfort zones.
Each episode aims to humanize the Lyme experience, foster greater understanding, and inspire more diverse storytelling about chronic illnesses in media and entertainment.

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary with a Convergence of Scientists, Clinicians, Patients and Celebrity Talent

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bay Area Lyme Foundation Celebrates Its 10^th Anniversary with a Convergence of Scientists, Clinicians, Patients, and Celebrity Talent

BAL honors the 2023 Younger Family Emerging Leader Award Winner, announces iHeartRadio partnership and acknowledges the perseverance of patients with persistent Lyme disease

PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif., June 13, 2023—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, celebrated its 10^th anniversary in May at LymeAid ®, its preeminent annual fundraising event, and announced Andriy Batchinsky, MD, as the winner of a $150,000 Younger Family Emerging Leader Award. A supportive audience of scientists, clinicians, patients, and philanthropists celebrated progress and commitment to ongoing research into tick-borne diseases, and iHeartRadio announced a partnership in honor of beloved DJ and radio host Jeffrey Vandergrift (“JV”), who passed away with Lyme disease earlier this year. LymeAid raised $683,000 of which 100 percent goes directly to fund scientific research, education, and prevention programs for Lyme disease, a potentially disabling infection that impacts an estimated half a million Americans each year.

Emmy-award winning comedian Dana Carvey, Master of Ceremonies for the event, was joined by The Bacon Brothers and local San Francisco band Pop Rocks, who were the musical guests for this evening of laughter, dining, and dancing to support cutting-edge discoveries and scientific breakthroughs. The fund-a-need for this event was Lyme Disease Biobank, a Bay Area Lyme Foundation program initiated in 2014 to collect and distribute blood, urine, and tissue samples for investigators working on developing diagnostics and treatment for tick-borne diseases.

“This is an amazing time for infectious disease research, offering great hope for patients. While we have made strides, our work is not done. We need to figure out the underlying cause of persistent Lyme disease and find a solution,” said keynote speaker Bill Robinson, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University, who shared ongoing research exploring ways to weaponize antibodies against persistent Lyme disease.

National Lyme Clinical Trials Network Gains Its First West Coast Center, Thanks to $1M+ Donation from Bay Area Lyme Foundation

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

National Lyme Clinical Trials Network Gains Its First West Coast Center, Thanks to $1M+ Donation from Bay Area Lyme Foundation

The University of California San Francisco Lyme Clinical Trials Center will support innovative clinical trials to develop treatments for patients with persistent Lyme disease

Portola Valley, CA, March 09, 2023—Bay Area Lyme Foundation, a leading sponsor of Lyme disease research in the US, announces it has awarded more than $1M to the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) for the development of a Lyme Clinical Trials Center. This new center will become the first West Coast site of the Lyme Clinical Trials Network. The Network aims to address the need for high quality, innovative clinical trials to develop evidence-based treatments for patients with persistent Lyme symptoms following initial antibiotic treatment—a population that has grown to more than two million Americans and continues to increase.

“The founding of the UCSF Lyme Clinical Trials Center provides a unique opportunity for Lyme patients to participate in the next generation of therapeutic trials to combat this devastating disease,” said Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, of the University of California San Francisco who will lead the UCSF Lyme Clinical Trials Center. “Very few clinical trials have been initiated to investigate therapeutic solutions to address persistent symptoms of Lyme disease, and we hope to change this.”

UCSF will join the Lyme Clinical Trials Network led by Columbia University, which includes Children’s National Hospital (part of the National Institutes of Health), and Johns Hopkins University. This important effort is funded by the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation.

Primary Care Medicine and the Challenges of Diagnosing Lyme Disease

By Bay Area Lyme

Bay-Area-Lyme-Foundation-Speaker-Series 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.