http://dx.doi.org/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.12090223

Abstract

Central sensitization is a process that links a variety of chronic pain disorders that are characterized by hypersensitivity to noxious stimuli and pain in response to non-noxious stimuli. Among these disorders, treatments that act centrally may have greater efficacy than treatments acting peripherally. Because many individuals with
post-treatment Lyme syndrome (PTLS) have a similar symptom cluster, central sensitization may be a process mediating or exacerbating their sensory processing. This article reviews central sensitization, reports new data on sensory hyperarousal in PTLS, explores the potential role of central sensitization in symptom chronicity, and suggests new directions for neurophysiologic and treatment research.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.12090223

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It has been on 18th of May here’s an insight and resume -

The 2013 Lyme Disease Symposium at University of New Haven
Dodds Theatre
300 Boston Post Road
West Haven CT 06516

University of New Haven will be hosting a Lyme disease symposium on Saturday, May 18th, at Dodd’s Auditorium - University of New Haven from 1:00pm – 7:00pm. The symposium will be devoted to new and exciting research currently being undertaken, to explore the mysteries of Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme disease bacteria. Topics include: the antibiotics sensitivity of the different formations (spirochete, cyst and biofilm) of Borrelia burgdorferi, the ultrastructure and the molecular components of the recently discovered Borrelia biofilm formation. There will be discussions on novel serological and culture tests as well as special lectures addressing multiple issues affecting children and the complexity of medical treatment options.

The poster session will focus the latest discoveries from student research from University of New Haven addressing multiple topics from antimicrobial sensitivity and biofilm related studies as well new findings on chronic diseases with potential spirochetal involvements.

The keynote speaker for the symposium will be Dr. Charles Ray Jones and three very special guests will attend: Dr. Jyotsna Shah, Dr. Joseph Burrascano, Dr. Alan MacDonald. For further information please visit UNH Lyme disease research website http://www.newhaven.edu/lyme and Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UNH.LymeGroup

Free and Open to the Public.

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Press Release
Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York
Contact: Media Relations, phone: 631.444.7880

May 13, 2013
http://commcgi.cc.stonybrook.edu/am2/publish/General_University_News_2/Lyme_Disease_Vaccine_Shows_Promise_in_Clinical_Trials.shtml
or http://goo.gl/ERwXn

STONY BROOK, N.Y., May 13, 2013 – The results of a phase 1/2 clinical trial in Europe of an investigational Lyme disease vaccine co-developed by researchers at Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and at healthcare company Baxter International S.A., revealed it to be promising and well tolerated, according to a research paper published online in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099%2813%2970110-5 The vaccine
was shown to produce substantial antibodies against all targeted species of Borrelia, the causative agent of Lyme disease in Europe and the United States. Baxter conducted the clinical trial of the vaccine.

Since the early 1990s, Benjamin Luft, MD, the Edmund D. Pellegrino Professor of Medicine at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, and the late John Dunn, Ph.D., a biologist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, spearheaded the initial development of the original vaccine antigen concept, and together with researchers at Baxter helped bio-engineer the formulation used in the clinical trial. Through the Stony Brook University School of Medicine and Brookhaven National Laboratory, The Research Foundation of the State of New York licensed intellectual property of the Lyme vaccine technology to Baxter. Baxter researchers in collaboration with Luft and Dunn developed further innovations employed in the Lyme vaccine used in the clinical trial.

In the article, “Safety and immunogenicity of a novel multivariant OspA vaccine against Lyme borreliosis in healthy adults: a double-blind, randomized, dose-escalation phase 1/2 trial,” Principal Investigator P. Noel Barrett, PhD, of Baxter, Biomedical Research Centre, and co-authors evaluated the safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine in a
range of doses in 300 people living in Austria and Germany. Study participants received three primary immunizations and one booster immunization. All doses and formulations, some of which included an adjuvant, an additive to stimulate immune response to the vaccine, induced substantial antibody titers against all species of Borrelia. The vaccine demonstrated predominantly mild adverse reactions and no-vaccine related serious events occurred in the sample population.

“The results of the clinical trial conducted by Baxter are promising because the vaccine generated a potent human immune reaction, covered the complete range of Borrelia active in the entire Northern hemisphere, and produced no major side effects,” said Dr. Luft, a co-author on the paper. “We hope that a larger-scale, Phase 3 trial will
demonstrate not only a strong immune response but true efficacy in a large population that illustrates protection against Lyme disease.”

Dr. Luft said that for years, one of the main challenges of developing a Lyme disease vaccine was to discover a method that could produce a vaccine effective on all Borrelia species. With the aid of technologies and expertise at Stony Brook and Brookhaven, Drs. Luft and Dunn focused vaccine development on the most abundant Borrelia outer surface protein found when the spirochete bacteria reside in ticks, which commonly transmit the disease. Using the scaffold of this protein, called OspA, they, in collaboration with researchers at Baxter, bioengineered a set of unique OspA proteins not found in nature. These new OspAs share different parts from different species of Borrelia. The new proteins are called chimeras.

“After a series of experimentations and refinements, formulations consisting of these new OspA proteins were shown to protect against a broad spectrum of Lyme disease spirochetes,” said Dr. Luft, summarizing the research results.

The vaccine used in the European clinical trial is based on these newly created OspA proteins and is therefore designed for broad based coverage.

For more details on the purpose and scope of the clinical trial, see the National Institutes of Health Clinical Trials website page, Phase 1/2 Lyme Vaccine Study, http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01504347?term=NCT01504347&rank=1

Collectively, the article co-authors included researchers from Baxter; Health Center Mainz in Germany; the Medical University of Vienna in Austria; the Institute of Tropical Medicine, University of Tubingen in Germany, and Stony Brook Medicine in the U.S.

Press Release Source: http://goo.gl/ERwXn

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Lyme disease activists hope the government will change its policy on treating the disease in response to what they vow will be an annual day of protest.

Wearing lime green and carrying printed and hand-drawn placards, hundreds of Lyme activists on Friday lined the cobblestone steps of Manhattan’s Union Square Park to protest the nation’s response to what they contend is an epidemic of undiagnosed and poorly treated Lyme disease.

Full story, video and comments: http://goo.gl/8B4ju

Letters:
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/staticfiles/news/forms/letter_form.htm

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Councilman Billy Boniface said he has been battling Lyme disease for the past few months.

Boniface, Health Officer Susan Kelly and David Reiher, head of the Health Department’s Rabies and Vector Control Program, proclaimed May as Lyme Disease Month in Harford County to promote awareness of a disease which officials said is often misdiagnosed and can lead to lifelong suffering for those who contract it.

“I’ve had to completely change my lifestyle,” Boniface said.

The council president – who was already grieving the loss of his son last June – said the disease affected his mind and his back. He went to several doctors but did not receive a correct diagnosis until he found a physician who also suffered from Lyme disease.

“The good Lord blessed me and I got led to a Lyme awareness doctor,” Boniface said.

Boniface said he has been taking antibiotics regularly, but “I’m going to be dealing with this the rest of my life.”

Kelly and Reiher spoke about Lyme disease during a roughly 35-minute presentation, which preceded the proclamation.

“We all do know the devastating effects,” Kelly said. “Many people in our own family and community have this disease.”

Reiher said cases of Lyme disease – which was first identified in Lyme, Conn., during the late 1970s – have doubled in Harford County between 2002 and 2011, peaking with 162 reported cases in 2007.

The Health Department has worked – with assistance from the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, plus the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – since 2008 to promote awareness and prevention of the disease locally.

Lyme disease can be found throughout the United States, but the highest incidence of cases is along the Eastern seaboard from Maryland to New England, and parts of the Midwest, such as Minnesota.

The disease is spread primarily by the black-legged or deer tick, which are carriers of the Lyme disease bacteria, known as Borrelia burgdorferi. The ticks attach themselves to small mammals such as mice in search of a “blood meal,” Reiher said.

Ticks in the nymph and adult stages carry the bacteria; humans are an attractive target because of their high body temperatures and the amount of carbon dioxide they exude.

“The tick needs a blood meal and it gets that from a host,” Reiher explained. “That host can be you.”

Reiher suggested a number of ways to prevent attracting ticks, especially using insect repellent that contains the chemicals DEET or Permethrin.

He noted the U.S. military provides clothing treated with Permethrin.

“I think we both agree prevention is probably the biggest, most important thing in dealing with Lyme disease that we should do,” Boniface said.

Visit http://www.harfordcountyhealth.com or call 410-877-2300 for more information.

Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/harford/belair/ph-ag-county-council-0510-20130507,0,3058110.story#ixzz2TrgVqZDT

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A federal jury today awarded $41.75 million to a girl who contracted a life-altering disease while on a school trip to China.

The girl, Cara Munn of New York City, was a ninth grader at The Hotchkiss School, a private boarding school in Lakeville, Conn., when she joined a school-supervised trip to China during the summer of 2007.

Prior to, and during the trip, the lawsuit alleges, the school failed to notify the girl or her family that it would be taking the students anywhere other than urban city centers or that that there was a risk of tick-borne diseases where the students would be traveling. The school also failed to ensure that the students take any precautions against disease-transmitting ticks, according to the suit. The school failed to advise the students to wear insect repellent, and it allowed them to walk through a densely wooded area called Mt. Panshan that was known to be a risk
area for Tick-Borne Encephalitis, Lyme Disease, and several other tick- and insect-transmitted illnesses, the lawsuit says. As a result, Cara contracted Tick-Borne Encephalitis, suffered brain damage, and is now unable to speak for the rest of her life.

“Hotchkiss failed to take basis safety precautions to protect the minor children in its care. The school should have been on notice that the Mt. Panshan area of China was an insect disease endemic area; but it failed to notify the students or their families that they would be going to Mt. Panshan, and it failed to ensure that anyone use repellent,” said Atty. Antonio Ponvert III of Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder in Bridgeport, CT, who is representing the girl and who tried the case.

The case lasted eight days, and the jury of two men and six women deliberated for about eight hours before returning their verdict.

“I hope that this case will help alert all schools who sponsor overseas trips for minors that they need to check the CDC for disease risks in the areas where they will be travelling, and that they must advise children in their care to use repellant and wear proper clothing when necessary,”
Ponvert said. “Cara’s injuries were easily preventable.”

Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder has offices in Bridgeport, New Haven, Danbury, and Stamford. The nationally known law firm has achieved record verdicts for people who suffer serious personal injuries or economic harm from medical malpractice, violation of their civil or constitutional rights, dangerous products, negligence, drunk drivers, corporate or governmental abuse and commercial misconduct.
(Source: http://www.koskoff.com)

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In the mid-1970s, several children in the town of Lyme, Connecticut, began to suffer from painful, swollen joints. They were diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, a rare condition. Clinicians at Yale School of Medicine suspected the cluster of cases was caused by an infectious agent. The illness, dubbed Lyme disease, was soon recorded in an increasing number of patients in the northeastern United States. Symptoms included rashes, fevers, joint and muscle pain, and heart and neurological problems.

National Institutes of Health researcher Willy Burgdorfer identified the culprit in 1982: a spirochete bacterium that, in electron micrograph images, resembles a broken twist of barbed wire. The spirochete, named Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), was first isolated from the gut of ticks collected in woodlands on Shelter Island, New York, where Lyme disease had become endemic.

Thirty years after its discovery, Lyme disease has become by far the most common vectorborne infection in North America. Today the ecology of Bb is the subject of both intense study and intense scientific debate. Some researchers think that protecting large tracts of forest habitat – a strategy that increases the diversity of vertebrate hosts for both Bb and its tick vectors – will ultimately reduce the risk of human
infection. Others argue that there is no predictable relationship between host biodiversity and human disease risk.

Full story: http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.121-a120

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The article is in fact a study that demonstrates that not all mice that come in contact with the borrelia bacteria become infected. Read full study here - http://www.news-medical.net/news/20130405/Not-all-mice-that-come-into-contact-with-Borrelia-contract-Lyme-disease-study-finds.aspx

The truth is, that not all HUMANS that become infected with the borrelia bacteria will develop lyme disease (in fact the majority won’t develop any tick-borne related illness). The same goes for a large number of other infections – hence in many healthy individuals babesia and bartonella cannot escalate into chronic stages, in fact healthy individuals might carry the bacteria and never develop chronic illness.

Not all humans that come in contact with the borrelia bacteria contract Lyme Disease. Studies show that over half the population in Europe carries one or more strings of the borrelia bacteria.

A friend of mine, that has been diagnosed with Lyme Disease  has tested 20 of her friends in a local laboratory (specialized in lyme disease testing) and she was amazed to find out that all the tests were positive for one or more strings of borrelia (all individuals are healthy and show no symptoms of lyme disease).

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Quitting smoking is difficult business, since you’re not only suffering from physical symptoms but there is a strong psychological bond between you and smoking as a habit.

Some people just don’t learn from their mistakes, they never wake up, I probably quit smoking about 20 times now since 2004 when I first started feeling ill and the more I’ve been on this roller-coaster of quitting and relapsing the more I’ve learned (I guess the hard way). As they say… it’s never too late to change.

Dozens of books have been written on quitting smoking, and I’ll just refer to Allen Carr’s (The Easy Way) because I find it to be the biggest scam there could ever be published and released onto the market. Don’t get me wrong, there are things that are worthwhile reading in the book, but the main idea behind this book just doesn’t match the reality of quitting smoking. There is no such thing as The East Way to quit smoking, and I’m talking about 20+ quits and probably several hundreds of hours browsing quit smoking forums along the years. Everyone goes through withdrawals, and quitting is NOT easy.

In my opinion, and many people might disagree, the big problem with smoking is NOT the nicotine! It’s 80% psychological, 10% nicotine withdrawal and 10% a dramatic change in your body chemistry, as it tries to get rid of all the poisonous chemicals and restore a healthy balance.

The psychological side of smoking – You need to smoke because you simply trained your brain to smoke, it’s simply a part of your whole being. It’s a behavior that is deep in your subconscious mind period. You had a smoke with your morning cup of coffee, you are used to have a smoke after work or after you had sex. Basically as a smoker you never leave your cigarette, which means it’s a behavior you have learned and it all comes from your subconscious mind. Then comes the nicotine addiction which in my opinion is the least problematic.

Why nicotine is not the main problem and how can we prove this?

Numerous people have been going through terrible withdrawals and mood swings even on the patch or nicotine gum. Some have been on NRTs for months and still didn’t get their life back, some even suffer from terrible anxiety or depression. So is it the nicotine? The short answer is no. It’s more of a psychological addiction rather than a substance addiction, that is why people get severe anxiety and depression even months into their quit.

It’s simple, the nicotine leaves your body entirely within 24 – 48 hours of the last administration so what are all the nasty withdrawal symptoms about? Thousands of chemicals leaving your body. Your body is basically into a healing and detoxifying mode that waste a ton of your energy. The body can’t deal with all the chemical detoxification all at once, hence you suffer from dozens of bodily symptoms. You can have symptoms ranging from muscle aches, panic attacks, chest pains, headaches and I’ve seen on other forums more severe symptoms such as numbness in the limbs, vision problems, hallucinations etc.

Your body is in a constant detox mode that might last anywhere between 1 – 3 months.

A lot of the symptoms might also be psychosomatic. There is just too much stress overtaking your entire being to the point where your body can’t take it any longer and that’s when you experience psychosomatic symptoms.

Every single one of my quits has been pretty similar – I quit – I started feeling worse, even if I was using nicotine replacement therapies – gum, nicotine inhalers, e-cigs and so on. (by the way e-cigarettes are much safer than some nasal nicotine inhalers * studies show.

One step at the time, your body is healing and detoxing heavily from …….. mercury…. aluminium ……. arsenic ….. carbon monoxide ….. no need to go on..

Smoking and chronic illness just don’t go hand in hand.

Hugs

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