Babes Battle Lyme's as New Treatment Nears

Yolanda Foster being treated for Lyme Disease

Researchers Have Developed A Lyme Disease Treatment That Will Prevent Infection

Researchers have been working on a treatment for Lyme disease that uses a more atypical approach to fighting it. Reportedly, the results from the testing so far have been auspicious. According to NBC News, the researchers have been formulating a prevention for Lyme disease that will build up the immune system in order to fight it off.

Specifically, they have been working on a “lab-engineered antibody” that will protect against the disease for an entire season. During testing on lab mice, the mice were totally protected against the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, the Borrelia bacteria.

Yolanda with daughters Gigi and Bella

For those not in the know (like me) Yolanda Foster is one of the "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills."

The antibody that makes this all possible is called a monoclonal antibody. The research team made it clear that this prevention method is not a vaccine. Dr. Mark Klempner, who is from the University of Massachusetts’ nonprofit vaccine development branch, MassBiologics, explained the difference between a vaccine, and the antibody that was created by the research team.

This particular Lyme disease prevention is supposedly superior to vaccines. Where vaccines aid in the creation of antibodies that are used to fight the disease, this antibody specifically targets the bacteria that causes Lyme.

Bella Hadid, Lyme's victim

Yes, but enough about scientists potentially finding a preventative for a disease that affects thousands of people in the US annually. What about the babes?

Just recently, it was revealed that Yolanda Foster’s children, Bella and Anwar Hadid, are battling Lyme disease along with their mother. As the Inquisitr reported, Yolanda recently accepted the award, “Power of One,” at the Global Lyme Alliance gala.

Avril Lavigne, Lyme's victim

Anwar is also a model.

Yolanda, during her acceptance speech, spoke of her debilitating disease and how it has affected her life and her parenting. Despite the impact her suffering had on her parenting, her children grew up to be very successful. Both her daughters, Bella and Gigi Hadid, are supermodels.

Singer Avril Lavigne also battles Lyme disease. Both women use their affluence and celebrity to help spread awareness of the disease. According to People, Dr. Raphael Kellman, the founder of the Kellman Center for Integrative and Functional Medicine, says that a lot of people just settle and live with their symptons. When celebrities like Avril and Yolanda reach out and speak up about Lyme disease, it gives hope and confidence to those diagnosed.

Avril Lavigne? The old one or the new one. I heard she was dead.

Not a bad use for celebrity. There have been a lot worse.

Klempner indicated that MassBiologics is making preparations to be able to test their monoclonal antibody on human subjects by next year. He also said that it is the goal of the university to be able to produce the antibody and provide it to the public at an affordable price.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 300,000 people get Lyme disease every year. Reportedly, the disease is spreading farther south and west. Compared to 1993, Lyme disease has been found in four times as many counties today than 22-years ago.

Lyme Disease is a big deal around here. We think Georgia has been infected at least once, having a tick bite with the classic bullseye rash. A round of antibiotics apparently eliminated it before she could develop antibodies.

Weird Science: Is Arthritis Caused by Sunspots?

Surprising: Researchers correlate rheumatoid arthritis and giant cell arteritis with solar cycles

What began as a chat between husband and wife has evolved into an intriguing scientific discovery. The results, published in May in BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) Open, show a “highly significant” correlation between periodic solar storms and incidences of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and giant cell arteritis (GCA), two potentially debilitating autoimmune diseases. The findings by a rare collaboration of physicists and medical researchers suggest a relationship between the solar outbursts and the incidence of these diseases that could lead to preventive measures if a causal link can be established.

RA and GCA are autoimmune conditions in which the body mistakenly attacks its own organs and tissues. RA inflames and swells joints and can cause crippling damage if left untreated. In GCA, the autoimmune disease results in inflammation of the wall of arteries, leading to headaches, jaw pain, vision problems and even blindness in severe cases.

Inspiring this study were conversations between Simon Wing, a Johns Hopkins University physicist and first author of the paper, and his wife, Lisa Rider, deputy unit chief of the Environmental Autoimmunity Group at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the National Institutes of Health, and a coauthor. Rider spotted data from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, showing that cases of RA and GCA followed close to 10-year cycles. “That got me curious,” Wing recalled. “Only a few things in nature have a periodicity of about 10-11 years and the solar cycle is one of them.”

Of course, there's the whole lynx, hare, sunspot cycle deal, but it's still controversial.

The research, which tracked correlations of the diseases with both geomagnetic activity and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) solar radiation, focused on cases recorded in Olmsted County, Minnesota, the home of the Mayo Clinic, over more than five decades. The physicists compared the data with indices of EUV radiation for the years 1950 through 2007 and indices of geomagnetic activity from 1966 through 2007. Included were all 207 cases of GCA and all 1,179 cases of RA occurring in Olmsted County during the periods and collected in a long-term study led by Sherine Gabriel, then of the Mayo Clinic and now dean of the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Correlations proved to be strongest between the diseases and geomagnetic activity. GCA incidence — defined as the number of new cases per capita per year in the county — regularly peaked within one year of the most intense geomagnetic activity, while RA incidence fell to a minimum within one year of the least intense activity. Correlations with the EUV indices were seen to be less robust and showed a significantly longer response time.

The findings were consistent with previous studies of the geographic distribution of RA cases in the United States. Such research found a greater incidence of the disease in sections of the country that are more likely to be affected by geomagnetic activity. For example, the heaviest incidence lay along geographic latitudes on the East Coast that were below those on the West Coast. This asymmetry may reflect the fact that high geomagnetic latitudes — areas most subject to geomagnetic activity — swing lower on the East Coast than on the opposite side of the country. While Washington, D.C., lies just 1 degree farther north than San Francisco geographically, for example, the U.S. capital is 7 degrees farther north in terms of geomagnetic latitude.

Of course, this is only a correlative study, and doesn't prove causation; but the notion that RA and GCA are causing the solar cycle is plainly silly, so it's reasonable to start looking for answers that relate to the solar cycles.

Since RA has been linked to Lyme Disease I would think that the effects of solar cycles on weather, and the effects of weather on tick borne disease should be among the factors considered.



Wombat-socho has the weekly compendium up at The Other McCain: "Rule 5 Sunday: Pipe Dreams."

Are Backyard Birds Spreading Lyme Disease?

Most of us have heard about the connections between Lyme disease, mice and deer, who seem to be important vectors for the the disease, but it turns out a natural reservoir for Lyme disease may come in feathery form:

Researchers Identify Birds Hosting Lyme Disease

Researchers have discovered several bird species that host ticks carrying Lyme disease bacteria in northwestern California as well as another pathogen that causes chronic illness in humans.

“The role of birds in the maintenance of Lyme disease bacteria in California is poorly understood,” said Erica Newman in a release. Newman is a UC Berkeley Ph.D. student in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley and lead author of a recently released study that “did a molecular study of bird blood, ticks present on the birds, and the associated species of bacteria that they were hosting.”

“This is the most extensive study of the role of birds in Lyme disease ecology in the western United States, and the first to consider the diversity of bird species, their behaviors and their habitats in identifying which birds are truly the most important as carriers.”
. . .
The teams study showed that the lesser goldfinch (Spinus psaltria), oak titmouse (Baeolophus inornatus) and the dark eyed junco (Junco hyemalis) were all competent hosts of Lyme disease bacteria (Borrelia burgdorferi) and harbored many more subtypes than other species. The golden crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia atricapilla) was found to be infected more frequently than other species. They also found, for the first time in the world according to Newman, that some bird species were hosting a related disease that humans can contract ­­— Borrelia bissetttii — which has infected people in Southern California and Europe.

That sounds suspiciously similar to the collection of birds visiting our feeder currently, Goldfinches, Titmice, Juncos and the occasional Sparrow. Slightly different species because we're on the East Coast and not the West, but a similar assemblage. I guess an important question is how readily the disease can be transferred from birds to humans. At least in the West, the principal tick that lives on birds, the Western Black-Legged Tick also transmits Lyme to humans. This is closely related to the Deer Ticks that transmit Lyme disease on the East Coast.

And there is some hint that the birds involved in the transmission of Lyme disease are beneficiaries of human habitation:

While chaparral shrub ecosystems tend to have high biodiversity with many species endemic to California, birds in those areas weren’t found to host Lyme disease at any significant rate.

But the birds that were found to host the disease were coincidentally the same bird species that happened to benefit from suburbanization in California, meaning they spend more time around humans.

It would be interesting to do a similar study out on the East Coast, the heart of the Lyme disease. Maybe you're (and our) bird feeder is contributing to the problem.

Chesapeake Activist Claims Climate Illness

Environmental activist has Lyme disease

An environmentalist who has been prominent in the opposition to the plan to convert a Calvert County gas plant into an export facility has Lyme disease. Mike Tidwell, the founder and president of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), made the announcement Dec. 11 in a letter to supporters.

Tidwell, a Takoma Park resident, stated he began to experience symptoms of the disease last spring. He was diagnosed with Lyme disease in October.

“I’m now part of a major epidemic—one likely linked to global warming,” Tidwell stated. “Lyme disease cases have skyrocketed in recent years and federal data show a parallel with rising temperatures. Globally, scientists say cases of tick- and mosquito-borne diseases will increase with climate change.”

Tidwell and his organization have participated in protests against Dominion’s plan to build a $3.8 billion liquefaction facility at Cove Point Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Plant in Lusby. The project has begun after a lengthy permitting process, which included public hearings held by the Maryland Public Service Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). It was the latter agency that granted final approval for the plan this past September.

Which is amusing because the actual climate in the region, the southern mid-Atlantic has actually been cooling at a rate of circa 2-3 F per decade for the last 10 years or so (see right).  So if he wants to blame his Lyme disease on the cooling climate, he's welcome to make that argument, if he would like. You see, global warming isn't necessarily the same as regional warming.

Of course, what has really led to the apparent rise of the Lyme disease is the numbers of one of its important host species, the White-tailed Deer, host of the Deer or Black Legged Tick which often carries Lyme disease. In the absence of controlling predators, and with plenty of suburban plantings to eat, these deer have become ubiquitous residents in close proximity to humans. We have them tramp through our yard frequently at night, and often see them.  At the turn of the 20th century, White-tailed deer had almost been eliminated from the eastern United States, only a determined plan to protect them has brought their populations back to the point that they have become a bit of problem species.

While I wouldn't wish Lyme disease on anyone, I also wish Tidwell wouldn't attempt to use it in such a bogus attempt to bolster his climate victim credentials.