re: A Cure for Chronic Lyme?

Friend of mine just had a liver transplant after getting wrecked by Lyme. He's had it for the 24 years I've known him and doctor after doctor said he didn't have it for probably the last 15 if not 20. In the past year the guy has been in the hospital more often than not. It turned a barrel chested booming voiced country boy in to a feeble looking whisper voiced old man. He is doing much better now after the transplant, but I don't think they really know how much damage that many years of the disease has done to him.

BMC Lyme Persisters

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Chronic lyme is just the diagnosis du jour for middle-upper class folk who have somatization of depression since fibromyalgia is out of fashion. There are probably some people who have some sort of lingering effect but I expect that to be the minority.

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people could erroneously somatize depression and think it Lyme or they could actually have Lyme. There is much ground breaking research revolving around Lyme and other vector borne diseases and it is flippant hubris to dismiss such claims as being attributable to lingering effects or depression.

Listening to the Patient Zero podcast at the moment, about the first recorded case of Lyme. Yeah ticks are not to frick around with. I know a guy that got bit and is now allergic to red meat. I guess I need to cover myself in repellent every time I go in the woods.

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I know a guy that got bit and is now allergic to red meat.

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The Lone Star tick does this. Makes you allergic to enzymes created to digest red meat I believe?

Anyway, the epicenter for these ticks in Appalachia with a whole lot in Middle Tennessee. Vanderbilt has a program studying it I believe.

I actually had a scare with it myself.

Was at my buddy's lake house on Tim's Ford Lake and pulled 2 Lone Star ticks off of my body that had definitely latched on. 3 days later, I ate a steak and potatoes for dinner and my throat started to swell and I my face was puffy. I googled and googled and found this red meat allergy issue.

Had to get blood test and everything, but I'm clear. Doctor thinks I must've had interaction with something else I'm allergic to and it was a coincidence.

I was thinking for weeks I was going to have to avoid red meat and dairy for the rest of my life and was seriously depressed. Cheese and meat are my favorite foods

None of the standard Lyme treatments kills Borrelia in a test tube. It depends on the drug, but upwards of 20% of Borrelia cells survive.

This is why you see so many treatment failures.

They’re still sick.

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Persister cells are not uncommon. What happened with Lyme had a lot to do with limited science, and pride. We had a lot of papers that said Lyme was easily treatable with a short course of antibiotics, and it was hard for some people to walk back from that. They were sure they were right. They had built their careers around being right.

Most people did respond to two to four weeks of antibiotic therapy. And for the people who claimed they were experiencing continued symptoms, we didn’t have an explanation to offer them.

That split the field into two camps.

One side said we’re missing something , the other, which represented the orthodoxy, said the issue is closed and we should generally curtail treatment in these cases for ethical reasons.

A lot of people were told, effectively, that this is all in your head.

The orthodoxy, including the Infectious Disease Society of America, got it wrong. We had an incomplete understanding of Borrelia, and the current treatment paradigm was flawed.

Unfortunately, because the orthodoxy said the issue was closed. There wasn’t a lot of good research being conducted. Thankfully private individuals got involved, the Cohen foundation deserves mention, and started bankrolling research in the late 2000s. That’s when we saw the first really good science.