My brain curculation is almost back to normal for this cycle, thus the difficult questions...

Here is an interesting concept, I wonder of anyone has thought about this. Maybe it has already been studied?

With lyme, there is the odd problem of migrating symptoms, It jumps from knee to ankle to the other knee to the brain etc. For me, in the progression of the disease, the cycles and sequences where very predictable , however as the disease progressed, it just turn out to be bad all the time.

I have always wondered how Lyme could do this since is was very seldom that there would be 2 kness or ankles or what ever else AT THE SAME TIME. It would migrate, leaving one site symtom free while moving to the other.

In order to do this, the organism MUST communicate from one to the other. This could be an immune mediated communication, but one would think that the immune response would be unversal throughout the body and as a result, have a high probaility of ighting up sever inflamiatory sites at once (at elast some of the time). On the other hand it could be something else. What about Blebs?

Blebs are shed from the surface of the bacteria as it is destoyed, some say, taking pieces of the outer proteins with it. Given the regional conditions in the body, the rate of bacteria destruction will likely be quite different, with the result that the first bacteria to be killed will shed blebs sooner and in larger quantities than others. Also these are shed in vary large numbers.
If the other bacteria can sense these blebs and modify its outer proteins in response, it would evade attack by that particular anitbody.

Since the density of bacteria is quoted as being very low in chronic cases (documented as 1 organism per cc), it would make a lot of sense that the blebs are what is making us sick.

This might be the explaination as to the Lymrix Fiasco... it was made of synthetic surface proteins, which very well may contain encoded blebs, which utlimately causes the Lyme symptoms.

If this is true, it would be significant in that both the Steereites and LLMD's would be correct and all could save face. Lyme would be an inflamatory disease (casues by residual blebs) but the blebs will keep coming until you kill ALL of the bacteria. If you dont keep the bacteria from proliferating, more and more blebs will be produced as a normal immunue response.

Also, the bleb half life does not seem to be known. Is it possible that they can sit around in the body for a long time or is it that they are recognized by the immune system and get encoded into the immune system memory cells, and from there act as an auto immuune disease. Given the fact that a lot of people DO get better after Lyme treatment this autoimmunue thing does not make a lot of sense. Also, if it is an autoimmune response then it should show up somewhere as an antibody of some particular wieght. Until somebody proves this by observing this I don't think the autoimmunue concept has any more validitiy than any other explaination.

I guess the bottom line here is how does one get the Bleb out. It would be interesting to see if there are any binding agents that would selectivly bind these things so that would be removed at a faster rate?

Any ideas?

I agree with your theory in general. I have heard that the immune system picks up pieces of whatever it is fighting and can get confused by those pieces. Lets say it picks up a piece of DNA and the DNA is similar to a segment of the DNA of the thyroid. So it goes after the Thyroid.

What needs to be done is to find out exactly what confuses the immune system to attack the Thyroid or whatever other "autoimmune" condition and find a way to reverse it or remove it.

Here is a really strange piece of the puzzele. Although I have had a low body temperature for over 10 years (Lyme over 20 years) my thyroid tests were always normal untill I started treating the Lyme disease! Then they went rapidly out of the normal range. My TSH climbed from 4 to 8.5. I am going to try to get a copy of my ANA test results next week.
 

I take abx, the Bb sense its arrival, shed, I get sicker.....but never better....cause I don't really ever hit them.
 

I figure my body was riddled with colonies of (lyme) bacteria... not just one colony moving around.

And some colonies are deeper in the tissues than others.. and while replication does not occur at every colony site at the same time, it's documented that every so often bacteria can "syncronize" then DO replicate at the same time.

Since blebs can shed bits of bacterial DNA - they're probably every where - tissues and blood. ALot of bacteria form blebs - not just Lyme. Researchers are not sure if blebs are a form of survival when they're threatened, or a prelude to death... in any case it's bacerial DNA - which the immune system will react to.

Plus we know that bacteria can alter the body's cemistry so that were just like a big incubator for them.

I get the heeby jeebies every time I think of how high my bacterial load really was.

Barb