Lyme borreliosis ? That is the most frequent bacterial disease in Africa. But it is also an affliction that is ``completely unknown to health professionals'', reckons the French Institute of Research and Development, the IRD. Why is that ? Up until the end of the 1980s, this disease was regarded as rare.
At that time, an IRD team showed that in the rural area of Dakar (Senegal), ``Lyme borreliosis was the most frequent reason for dispensary consultations after malaria''. So in 1990 the IRD launched a huge research programme on this disease in the country, which was later extended to all of West Africa.
Between 1990 and 2003, a team studied the disease in Dielmo, a Senegalese village. Throughout this period, 11% of the population suffered from borreliosis each year, which is an exceptional level of incidence. The researchers also discovered that this disease caused recurrent fever in the long term which could result in serious meningoencephalitis, which was sometimes fatal. Symptoms exactly similar to those of malaria. The disease is thus systematically confused with the latter. Which explains, of course, why there has been so much failure in terms of treatment since treatment for malaria is not effective against borreliosis. Only tetracycline antibiotics produce results.
Diagnosis is also made difficult by the problem of detecting Borrelia crocidurae, the bacteria responsible for the disease. It is not ``detectable in the blood except during attacks of fever. Laboratory examinations are rarely possible in tropical Africa, in particular in rural areas.| Destination sant�
Posted by nancyb (Member # 10154) on :
Over at Canlyme there has been a recent topic regarding Malaria that you may find interesting.
MS linked to Malaria - Some very interesting reading with links.
I do find it interesting in a selfish way because I have a history of recurrent malaria- and ONE of those times I was diagnosed malaria I was blood negative malaria- yup, malaria is a clinical diagnosis sometimes- but I actually wonder if that time it was malaria at all or a TBE virus! because I was in a city, Hyderabad, with recurrent JEV outbreaks!!!!!!!!! And I sometimes wonder if my seronegative Babs was actually reinvigorated malaria- although my kid was seropositive repeatedly for WA1-
ANYWAY- interesting stuff!!!
Posted by nancyb (Member # 10154) on :
I think you may also find some interesting links between Malaria and Babesia over on Canlyme as well.
There seems like there is so much left to learn...
Posted by treepatrol (Member # 4117) on :
Thats because spirochetes ARE parasites. Posted by nellypointis (Member # 1719) on :
quote:Lyme borreliosis ? That is the most frequent bacterial disease in Africa.
quote:Diagnosis is also made difficult by the problem of detecting Borrelia crocidurae, the bacteria responsible for the disease.
Sarah,
What I find really strange is that they call it "Lyme" borreliosis, yet later on they do talk of Borrelia crocidurae not Bb, so it is not Lyme but a relapsing fever caused by a different borrelia. The more talked about relapsing fever spiros are B. duttonii and B. recurrentis, that's the ones I've read about anyway.
A few years ago on our French discussion group, we had a woman from Senegal, and she insited she had what the doctors had called Lyme, and she said "Lyme" was very common in West Africa.
I was very puzzled by her testimony at the time, as I thought Lyme was largely an infection of more temperate climates.
Looks like the doctors there call it Lyme!!!
I showed a video of some spiros that had been made from the blood of a Norwegian patient to a microbiologist involved in spiros here in France and he said "they must be relapsing fever spiros", when I said why? he just mumbled something vague. I suspect it was because that he was just more familiar with various borrelias that cause relapsing fever than with Bb.
As a child I had strange bouts of very high fevers (>41�C that's very high!) to the point of being delirious, with vomiting and sometimes bad headaches. I had them several times a year (8-9), summer, winter any time, pretty sure they weren't your garden variety viral "something". Nobody else in my family caught it from me, and also the fevers were too, too high for some normal viral kiddy's thinggo. I had fewer and fewer of them as I grew older, probably my last one was when I was 13. I had not been to Africa or to other exotic settings, I had lived in France from the start.
To be looked into (relapsing fever spirochetes)
Nelly
Posted by CaliforniaLyme (Member # 7136) on :
We've had 2 RF people locally- one guy in Monterey with B Hermsii and one woman with B parkeri who was almost indistinguishable from Lyme- and B Miyamotoi is very much like Lyme!!! The RF guy and RF woman both had very bad outcomes compared to rest of our group-!!! I think if you don't catch it at outset can just be a heck of a thing to get rid of- worse than regular Lyme-
Posted by nellypointis (Member # 1719) on :
Interesting! very interesting!
I wonder whether relapsing fever spiros are in fact one of the reasons for some of the seronegative "Lyme" cases (or of the partially positive cases, as in a few bands but not enough to be CDC +)
I suspect that there are many, many, many different strains of relapsing fever spirochetes and that most are not known, or vaguely known, and of course the symptoms they cause won't be described either.
The more I delve into the field (been delving for years, still a long way to go!), the more I am convinced that we have to do a lot of "educated guessing" and then proceed by trial and error re treatment, otherwise we will be spending our entire lives looking for elusive answers re our exact individual infectious soup.
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