Bob Cowart has had Lyme disease for an estimated 40 years

A very good Lyme blog here:

http://bobcowart.blogspot.co.uk/

Bob Cowart has had Lyme disease for an estimated 40 years, according to his diagnosis in 2006. It was probably contracted in PA, where he grew up and was often exposed to ticks. He was subsequently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2009. The debate continues between his Lyme and Parkinson's doctors as to which diagnosis is accurate.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2012

Babesia-like Organism

Here's something I didn't know about, and haven't read before. I am aware of BLOs, which are Bartonella-like Organisms. I was unaware of Babesia-like Organisms, such as WA1. 

This abstract is on PubMed. The entire paper is available if you click through. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1995. Not new news but informative, nonethless.

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Sent on: Tue Oct 30 13:17:05 20121 selected item: 7816065

PubMed Results

Item 1 of 1    (Display the citation in PubMed)

1.	Infection with a babesia-like organism in northern California.
	Persing DH, Herwaldt BL, Glaser C, Lane RS, Thomford JW, Mathiesen D, Krause PJ, Phillip DF, Conrad PA.
	N Engl J Med. 1995 Feb 2;332(5):298-303.
	PMID: 7816065 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Free Article
	Related citations

Lyme Disease in Washington State (and more)

Here's a page about Lyme in Washington State. There are also many links on the page, down at bottom, pointing to coverage of numerous Lyme issues.

http://lyme.kaiserpapers.org/washington.html

The Ecology of Disease

Here's an interesting and somewhat worrisome article about the ecology of infectious diseases, including Lyme.
From the NY Times, first printed July 14, 2012
...And Lyme disease, the East Coast scourge, [Correction: Lyme is found in all 48 contiguous states -Bob] is very much a product of human changes to the environment: the reduction and fragmentation of large contiguous forests. Development chased off predators — wolves, foxes, owls and hawks. That has resulted in a fivefold increase in white-footed mice, which are great “reservoirs” for the Lyme bacteria, probably because they have poor immune systems. And they are terrible groomers. When possums or gray squirrels groom, they remove 90 percent of the larval ticks that spread the disease, while mice kill just half. “So mice are producing huge numbers of infected nymphs,” says the Lyme disease researcher Richard Ostfeld.
“When we do things in an ecosystem that erode biodiversity — we chop forests into bits or replace habitat with agricultural fields — we tend to get rid of species that serve a protective role,” Dr. Ostfeld told me. “There are a few species that are reservoirs and a lot of species that are not. The ones we encourage are the ones that play reservoir roles.”
Dr. Ostfeld has seen two emerging diseases — babesiosis and anaplasmosis — that affect humans in the ticks he studies, and he has raised the alarm about the possibility of their spread.
Read full story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/the-ecology-of-disease.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Location:Berkeley,United States

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2012

Scientists create new compounds that could slow progression of Parkinson's

Feed: THE MEDICAL NEWS

Posted on: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 11:28 PM

Subject: Scientists create new compounds that could slow progression of Parkinson's

In an early-stage breakthrough, a team of Northwestern University scientists has developed a new family of compounds that could slow the progression of Parkinson's disease.

View article...