A Perfect Storm? Ticks, mosquito and Chronic Lyme

I was participating in discussion about Doxycycline resistant bacteria. There have already been reports of salmonella resistant to Doxycycline. One of the other contributors made a point to say that the discovery of Doxycycline resistant salmonella was not in the US. I found that disturbing.

Pardon me if I start to sound like that poor man from Lymeaction. org - He has some very interesting points if you can drown out all the other psychotic sounding stuff that comes with it.

There have been several US reports of tetracycline resistant bacteria in livestock. I know it is just a matter of time before Doxycycline (specifically) is a part of that list. But why would it matter if it was or was not in the US? There is no pathogen resistant bubble around the US. However a drug resistant germs point of origin is pointless conjecture to the average person once it arrives in their schools, hospitals and homes. Was it the fault of doctors who under prescribed antibiotics, patients who didn't take them correctly or the fault of agriculture who misused them? No one who is sick in bed with fight over this.

Don't get me wrong - I believe people with Chronic Lyme need to be treated. But I have to be honest - I don't see too many Chronic Lyme suffers who do 2 years of antibiotics being out and out cured. (more on this statement click here) I am not about to give up my antibiotics though. On the antibiotics I am able to work, be a mom and think. Off of antibiotics - I am a reduced to laying in bed with tremors. I am just starting to wonder if the IDSA didn't tackle the issue of chronic Lyme because they knew there was no cure. Seems like they would have at least talked about palliative care.

But why don't people get the whole "globalization" of disease thing? Do we not teach the outbreak of Yellow Fever and Typhoid anymore in schools? How these disease arrive from distant shores and killed US citizens in short order?

Why don't people understand that antibiotic resistance is caused by
1. under dosing
2. noncompliance
3. poor waste disposal
4. re-exposure to contaminants

NOT taking 2 years of doxycycline. In fact I would go in the other direction and say that 3 weeks of doxycycline is under dosing and likely to produce bacteria resistance.

I look at how dirty our agricultural practices are and it is clear that we don't get how disease spreads or becomes virulent. How we cover up filthy conditions by dosing contaminated animals with antibiotics and then we return them to the same infected befouled conditions to be infected again. Sometimes the dosing is accurate but most of the time it is not. Sometimes it is for the correct length of time but most of time it is only enough to get the animal to market.

Why does China have the bird flu and we don't? The Chinese Agricultural ministry decided the best idea was to put low doses of oseltamivir phosphate (Tamiflu) into the water and feed on chicken farms. Chronic under dosing, poor compliance, returning the animals to the same contaminated conditions. - You get an oseltamivir phosphate resistant flu in birds. Birds fly - they go all around the world. Birds are butchered and show up in your super market. Birds are sold and end up on US farms. The bird flu will travel here.

Take for instance. Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) is a distant concern in the US. It is caused by infection with a tick-borne virus (Nairovirus) in the family Bunyaviridae. It occurs in countries other than ours. But many of our livestock products we use and eat come from countries other than ours too. Malaria out breaks in the US have all been travel related. Just because a disease starts somewhere else there is no reason to think that it will not end up here.

Despite the name of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic Fever is primarily found in Eastern Europe, particularly in the former Soviet Union. It is also distributed throughout the Mediterranean, in northwestern China, central Asia, southern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Yes place like Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been small out breaks in the US in livestock but it is not epidemic here.

CCHF is transmitted to humans when bitten by an infected tick, the virus is also commonly transmitted directly to humans from its natural wildlife and livestock hosts. The human disease spreads as people come into close contact with livestock, whether alive or, even more riskily, dead. Your tanners and butchers that make leather and dog food would be at risk. Even human to human contact via saliva or infected tissue or blood can spread the disease to medical personnel.

Diseases don't just cross borders they also cross hosts. Dr. Willy Burgdorfer is studying evidence that certain mosquitoes can be carriers and transmitters of Lyme disease to humans. Drs. Magnarelli, Johnson, and Barbour showed 23% percent of mosquitoes feeding on animals infected with Borrelia burgdorferi become infected themselves. The bacteria survived up to three days within the salivary glands of the mosquitoes. While there has only been one report of a mosquitoes infecting a human with Lyme disease way back in 1965, we know that all the pieces of the puzzle necessary for them to be carriers exists.

Possibly it would just take one wet summer or a bumper crop of acorns or a slightly altered bacteria. I hate to think of it. I know I will not give up the treatment that is sustaining me. But as a community we need to get our arms around this thing.