Symptoms of Lyme disease and how to treat them

1. Symptoms of Lyme Disease and How to Treat Them

2. Lyme disease is a tick-borne infection caused by Borreliaburgdorferi, a type of corkscrew-shaped bacteria known as a spirochete. Recently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that Lyme disease is much more common than previously thought, with over 400,000 new cases diagnosed each year in the United States. That makes annual new cases of Lyme disease in this country about four times more common than new cases of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and syphilis combined.  Over the years, many patients with unexplained medical symptoms including chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia, among a litany of others have been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease and treated with long-term antibiotics. This treatment, however, may not provide any clinical improvements for these patients and could lead to adverse effects, according to infectious disease specialists.

3. Chronic Lyme disease The term "chronic Lyme disease" has been applied to a number of different conditions. As well as referring to patients who have not been treated, or who have been inadequately treated, it is also used to refer to patients who are seronegative (i.e. the standard antibody tests are negative) but who have typical symptoms such as pain, fatigue and neurocognitive complaints. There are many labs which use unvalidated tests to diagnose patients with Lyme disease. Research shows that many of these unvalidated tests produce large numbers of false positive results — up to 50% in some cases. Some lyme advocates claim that the standard CDC test does not pick up some cases of lyme, and that these tests are more accurate. However there is no evidence that the standard 2-tier CDC test is inaccurate — extensive peer-reviewed literature shows that it's specificity is 99% (i.e. 1% false positives), and its sensitivity is 97-100% after the initial acute phase of the illness (i.e. 0-3% false negatives).

4. The real cause of chronic Lyme These patients clearly have a illness, so it is important to find out what is causing their disability. Studies show that the majority of patients who go for treatment at lymelaboraties are seronegative for borrelia, and fit the criteria of CFS rather than for Lyme disease. Interestingly, if you look at the igenexlyme results posted on the internet by some people, you'll see that many of them are positive in bands 31, 41 and 83/93 in the IgM western blot. However the igenex test itself says "Positive result for 83/93kDa, 31kDa and 41kDa may be present in persons infected with HSV,EBV,HCV and/or syphilis and may give false positive result". (CDC critera requires other bands for a positive result). HSV and EBV are herpesvirus infections, which reactivate in the body when under any stress.

5. Bands 23 and 39 on the western blot can also cross-react with human CD40 immune cells, resulting in a false positive, and band 58 is associated with HSV/EBV infection. Lyme disease is an infectious disease caused by the bacteria Borreliaburgdorferi. B. burgdorferi is transmitted to humans by a bite from an infected black-legged or deer tick. The tick becomes infected after feeding on infected deer, birds, or mice. A tick has to be present on the skin for at least 36 hours to transmit the infection. Many people with Lyme disease have no memory of a tick bite. Lyme disease was first recognized in the town of Old Lyme, Connecticut, in 1975. It’s the most common tickborne illness in Europe and the United States.

6. People who live or spend time in wooded areas known for transmission of the disease are more likely to get this illness. People with domesticated animals that visit wooded areas also have a higher risk of getting Lyme disease. People with Lyme disease may react to it differently, and the symptoms can vary in severity. Although Lyme disease is commonly divided into three stages — early localized, early disseminated, and late disseminated — symptoms can overlap. Some people will also present in a later stage of disease without having symptoms of earlier disease.

7. These are some of the more common symptoms of Lyme disease: • A  flat, circular rash that looks like a red oval or bull's-eye anywhere on your body • Fatigue • Joint pain and swelling • Muscle aches • Headache • Fever • Swollen lymph nodes • Sleep disturbances • Difficulty concentrating

8. Active herpesvirus infections are also very common in CFS, likely also due to reactivation. In both CFS, and when under stress, the immune system shifts away from the anti-viral Th1 branch, resulting in increased susceptibility to viral infection and reactivation of latent viruses such as herpesviruses. Research shows that exam stress causes EBV antibodies to significantly increase, and that it was consistent with reactivation of the latent virus. Over 90% of the population is infected with HSV or EBV, so a positive igenex test with a few bands that is negative by CDC standards may just be saying that you are under stress or have CFS. The findings demonstrate the complexity of Lyme disease,” said Dr. Shah, the lead author of the study who is President and Laboratory Director of IGeneX. “The new test shows exposure to another form of the disease that cannot be detected with currently available Lyme testing.”

9. In the study, the line immunoblot test was used to detect antibodies against relapsing fever Borrelia in well-characterized serum samples from patients in Australia, Ukraine and the United States. The novel test showed high sensitivity for these antibodies, and there were very few false-positive results. “Line immunoblot testing offers a reliable method to detect exposure to relapsing fever Borrelia,” said Dr. Shkilna, who treats Lyme disease in USA. “The test can demonstrate exposure in individual patients and help us understand the global spread of tick-borne relapsing fever.”

10. Recently another form of tick-borne disease caused by relapsing fever Borrelia has been recognized in the United States and internationally. Until now there has been no reliable test for exposure to this family of Borrelia spirochetes. The new study describes a sensitive and specific test called a line immunoblot developed by IGeneX Laboratory that detects antibodies against relapsing fever Borrelia. IGeneX had previously developed a line immunoblot test for exposure to Lyme spirochetes related to Borreliaburgdorferi