Volume: 5 Table of Contents: I. LYMENET: New LymeNet Law System Generates Interest II. SCRIP: Lyme disease vaccines - a mixed blessing? III. FOLIA PARASITOL: Role of grey squirrels and pheasants in the transmission of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, the Lyme disease spirochaete, in the U.K. IV. EUR J CLIN MICROBIOL INFECT DIS: In vitro activity of trimethoprim against Borrelia burgdorferi V. NEUROLOGY: Interleukin-6 is expressed at high levels in the CNS in Lyme neuroborreliosis. VI. About The LymeNet Newsletter Newsletter: *********************************************************************** * The National Lyme Disease Network * * http://www.lymenet.org/ * * LymeNet Newsletter * *********************************************************************** IDX# Volume 5 / Number 11 / 10-NOV-97 IDX# INDEX IDX# IDX# I. LYMENET: New LymeNet Law System Generates Interest IDX# II. SCRIP: Lyme disease vaccines - a mixed blessing? IDX# III. FOLIA PARASITOL: Role of grey squirrels and pheasants in IDX# the transmission of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, the IDX# Lyme disease spirochaete, in the U.K. IDX# IV. EUR J CLIN MICROBIOL INFECT DIS: In vitro activity of IDX# trimethoprim against Borrelia burgdorferi IDX# V. NEUROLOGY: Interleukin-6 is expressed at high levels in IDX# the CNS in Lyme neuroborreliosis. IDX# VI. About The LymeNet Newsletter IDX# I. LYMENET: New LymeNet Law System Generates Interest -------------------------------------------------------- DATE: November 6, 1997 The new design of the LymeNet web site is demonstrating that breaking down information bottlenecks on the Internet has real benefits. Interest in the new LymeNet Law pages has soared, with hit counts up over 400% since the changes went into effect. Ira M. Maurer, an attorney who specializes in Lyme related legal matters, is now free to quickly and easily publish information on the LymeNet Law Site. The content ranges from descriptions of malpractice and insurance company cases, explanations of relevant laws, and pointers to other sites for further research. Prior to the upgrade, his information was trapped in the slow and complex traditional Internet publishing methods. Now, he can make information available in minutes. "The new LymeNet Law system is very exciting," Maurer said. "I now have the ability to modify the Law Pages from either my office or home without having to send the material to the Webmaster. This change gives me the freedom to make breaking legal information available to the world as soon as I obtain it." The LymeNet Law Pages are available at: http://law.lymenet.org/ =====*===== II. SCRIP: Lyme disease vaccines - a mixed blessing? ------------------------------------------------------ DATE: October 10, 1997 From SCRIP World Pharmaceutical News, No S00555414 F Vaccines against Lyme disease, which could be available in the US by next year, may confuse or hinder the accurate diagnosis and treatment of tick-borne diseases, one expert said at the recent ICAAC meeting in Toronto. The vaccines - being developed by Pasteur Merieux Connaught and SmithKline Beecham (Scrip No 2269, p 25) - will protect approximately 80% of individuals against Lyme disease. However, the 20% failure rate could cause problems, said Dr David Persing of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. These patients will test positively for Lyme disease antibodies, as will those who have been infected, but could go on to contract the disease. As they believe themselves to be protected, any cases of Lyme disease are likely to be missed, or diagnosis delayed. In such cases late-stages symptoms can include cardiac arrhythmias, facial paralysis and arthritis. An additional concern is that vaccinated people, feeling protected, will stop checking for tick bites, thereby risking exposure to other emerging tick-borne diseases, including babesiosis, ehrlichiosis and other as yet unrecognised rickettsia-like agents. Patients failing antibiotic therapy for Lyme disease will need to be evaluated for secondary pathogens, Dr Persing said. [...] Over the past few years, a curious convergence of pathogens has been recognised in areas already endemic for [Lyme] disease. Babesia microti, a blood parasite related to the organism which causes malaria, is now frequently found along with the Lyme disease spirochaete (Borrelia burgdorferi) in mice. Ehrlichiosis has also been associated with transmission by deer ticks. Human infections with these other organisms, both alone and in combination with Lyme disease, are now being described, and successful treatment may rest on proper and timely diagnosis. Non-specific febrile illness is characteristic of all three tick-borne diseases, alone or in combination. The long-term impact of babesiosis is not well established, but initial studies have indicated elevated liver enzymes and some haematological abnormalities, Dr Persing noted. Little is known about ehrlichosis. PMC's director of corporate research, Dr Zahradnick, told Scrip that there is evidence that people can be infected with Lyme disease more than once, suggesting that any immunity acquired from prior exposure to the disease is sub-optimal and short-lived. Alternatively, this phenomenon could be caused by early antibiotic treatment, which prevents the patient from mounting a full antibody response. Either way, "a lot more work needs to be done on the natural history of these diseases before we can speculate on any negative impact of the vaccine", he said. Faced with the possibility of co-infection in endemic areas, doctors should switch from using the standard therapy for Lyme disease - beta-lactam antibiotics such as ampicillin - to doxycycline or tetracycline, which are also effective against Borrelia and Erhlichia species, Dr Persing believes. In the case of concurrent infection with Lyme disease and babesiosis, treatment is complicated because doxycycline is thought to have limited activity against the latter, he said. The currently recommended therapy for acute babesiosis - iv clindamycin plus quinine - is not recommended for mild or subclinical cases, nor is it indicated for Lyme disease. In the absence of new treatments, much of the short-term focus will have to be on new methods for pathogen identification and discovery, such as PCR and direct DNA sequence analysis, Dr Persing said. These techniques will help to improve the identification of pathogens transmitted by deer ticks, with the aim of clarifying the role of known and unknown organisms involved in the transmission cycle of Lyme diseases. As well as aiding diagnosis, such techniques also may provide potential new targets for drug therapy. =====*===== III. FOLIA PARASITOL: Role of grey squirrels and pheasants in the transmission of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, the Lyme disease spirochaete, in the U.K. ------------------------------------------------------------------ AUTHORS: Craine NG, Nuttall PA, Marriott AC, Randolph SE ORGANIZATION: Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, UK. REFERENCE: Folia Parasitol (Praha) 1997;44(2):155-60 ABSTRACT: In Britain, grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis Gmelin) and pheasants (Phasianus colchicus Linnaeus) are important hosts of larvae and nymphs of Ixodes ricinus L., the principal European vector of the Lyme disease spirochaete, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato. To test whether squirrels are competent hosts of B. burgdorferi s.l., three females were trapped in the wild and then held in captivity. Following treatment, each animal was exposed to uninfected xenodiagnostic I. ricinus ticks. Squirrel A (an adult) which was inoculated experimentally with B. burgdorferi s.l., transmitted the infection to xenodiagnostic ticks. In contrast, squirrel B (a juvenile that was not inoculated) - showed no evidence of infection. Xenodiagnostic ticks that fed on control squirrel C (an adult) became infected and subsequently transmitted the infection experimentally to an uninfected hamster. The results indicated that squirrel C had a disseminated infection acquired in the wild and which persisted for at least 11 weeks. These data clearly demonstrate that grey squirrels are amplifying and reservoir hosts of B. burgdorferi s.l. The strain associated with squirrels was related to the B. afzelii genotype. Two observations implicated pheasants in a similar role: (i) a high prevalence of infection in engorged larvae collected from trapped pheasants, and (ii) the detection of B. burgdorferi s.l. (B. garinii genotype) in the wattle of 1/10 pheasants using PCR. Xenodiagnostic experiments similar to those undertaken with the squirrels are needed to confirm the role of pheasants in the transmission cycle of Lyme disease spirochaetes. =====*===== IV. EUR J CLIN MICROBIOL INFECT DIS: In vitro activity of trimethoprim against Borrelia burgdorferi ----------------------------------------------------------- AUTHORS: Reisinger EC, Wendelin I, Gasser R, ORGANIZATION: Department of Medicine, Karl-Franzens University, Graz, Austria. REFERENCE: Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis 1997 Jun;16(6):458-60 ABSTRACT: A new culture medium has been developed to evaluate the activity of trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole against Borrelia burgdorferi in vitro. In this specially modified Barbour-Stoenner-Kelly medium, in which antagonizing substances were reduced to a minimum, trimethoprim was more active against Borrelia burgdorferi than against a sensitive strain of Escherichia coli, but sulfamethoxazole was not active against Borrelia burgdorferi. =====*===== V. NEUROLOGY: Interleukin-6 is expressed at high levels in the CNS in Lyme neuroborreliosis. -------------------------------------------------------------- AUTHORS: Pachner AR, Amemiya K, Delaney E, O'Neill T, Hughes CA, Zhang WF ORGANIZATION: Department of Neurology, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC 20007, USA. ABSTRACT: In patients with Lyme neuroborreliosis, inflammation and symptoms of fatigue and malaise occur out of proportion to the relatively low number of spirochetes present. Previous studies have identified interleukin-6 (IL-6) as a candidate molecule for amplification of CNS inflammation in this disease. We pursued this possibility by measuring cytokine gene expression by reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in the brain of rhesus macaques actively infected with Borrelia burgdorferi. Samples of brain tissue were screened for IL-6 and interferon gamma using RT-PCR-ELISA, a technique that uses RT-PCR, subsequent hybridization of the PCR product with a biotinylated probe, and capture and ELISA readout of hybridization product. The number of copies in positive samples was then quantitated using qRT-PCR-ELISA, in which wild-type cytokine cDNA competes with recombinant competitor DNA in the PCR. Elevated levels of IL-6 cDNA and, to a lesser extent, interferon gamma were detected in three of three nonhuman primates with persistent infection with B burgdorferi, whereas the brains of three uninfected animals and undetectable levels of gene expression of these cytokines. These data support the hypothesis that cytokines such as IL-6 are important amplification molecules for CNS inflammation in Lyme neuroborreliosis. =====*===== IV. ABOUT THE LYMENET NEWSLETTER ---------------------------------- For the most current information on LymeNet subscriptions, contributions, and other sources of information on Lyme disease, please refer to the LymeNet Home Page at: http://www.lymenet.org ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the LymeNet newsletter, send a message to: [email protected] On the first line of the message, write: unsub lymenet-l ----------------------------------------------------------------------- LymeNet - The Internet Lyme Disease Information Source ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Editor-in-Chief: Marc C. Gabriel <[email protected]> FAX (for contributions ONLY): 908-789-0028 Contributing Editors: Carl Brenner <[email protected]> John Setel O'Donnell <[email protected]> Frank Demarest <[email protected]> Advisors: Carol-Jane Stolow, Director <[email protected]> William S. Stolow, President <[email protected]> The Lyme Disease Network of New Jersey ----------------------------------------------------------------------- WHEN COMMENTS ARE PRESENTED WITH AN ATTRIBUTION, THEY DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE OPINIONS/ANALYSES OF THE EDITORS. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS NEWSLETTER MAY BE REPRODUCED AND/OR POSTED ON BULLETIN BOARDS FREELY AS LONG AS IT IS NOT MODIFIED OR ABRIDGED IN ANY WAY. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SEND ALL BUG REPORTS TO [email protected] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- |
Home |
Flash Discussion |
Support Groups |
On-Line Library © 1994-1999
The Lyme Disease Network of New Jersey, Inc. |