Maybe you have seen this, but for those who haven't I will warn you this is scary stuff, not fun reading, but we need to know. Note the LDA for funding part of this research, I am thankful for them, even though it isn't good news.
But hopefully this kind of research will lead to answers/cure in the future.
This is the weaponized strain.
Posted by minimonkey (Member # 8693) on :
SO, seeing as how this is osp C and A, it wouldn't then show up on the Western Blots as positive, right, since bands 31 and 34 were removed from the CDC criteria per the Dearborn Conference?
Doesn't this, in and of itself, call for a re-thinking of the CDC criteria?
Hmmmm.... wonder what this means for diagnosis and treatment, longterm.
Posted by Greatcod (Member # 7002) on :
"This is the weaponized strain"
That was my first thought , too.
Posted by sparkle7 (Member # 10397) on :
Maybe someone should explain that to the lady who wrote the book about the witches in Salem having Lyme...
And all those other people who found Lyme (ie: Bb) in ancient artifacts & saying "It's been around since ancient times..." bla, bla, bla.
I've lived in NJ all of my life. Lyme disease was a non-issue prior to the 70's. People just have some kind of selective attention deficit disorder. Especially, if their paradigm of reality has to shift.
They'd rather blame witches than the gov't...
So, who can I sue now for 10+ of suffering, loss of income, etc.?
PS- Thanks for posting this. I'm sure I'll be hearing all about this on CNN & in the mainstream media (NOT).
Posted by Eight Legs Bad (Member # 13680) on :
I have no doubt that there are virulent strains of Lyme in existence, but I am skeptical as to whether the clone identified in this study is ***the*** cause of chronic Lyme.
I think people need to take hard look at the history and/or background of some of those involved in this study, such as CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer Martin Schriefer, and Baxter International, which is currently trying to launch an Osp A based vaccine in Europe.
I feel pessimistic about any project jointly funded by LDA and the NIH. The interests of the patients and the interests of the US federal government, as expressed by NIH, are opposed to each other.
Elena Cook
Posted by bettyg (Member # 6147) on :
copying this here to read....
Source: Stony Brook University Medical Center *********************************************3
Released: Wed 25-Jun-2008, 16:25 ET
Discovery of Lyme Disease Bug Clone May Explain Disease Spread
Keywords
LYME DISEASE, BORRELIA BURGDORFERI, TIC-BORNE DISEASES, INFECTIOUS DISEASES, DR. BENJAMIN LUFT, STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY Contact Information
Available for logged-in reporters only
Description ***********
Benjamin Luft, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Stony Brook University Medical Center, and colleagues discovered that a certain clone of Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochete that causes Lyme disease, appears to be the most common strain causing Lyme disease in North America and Europe, and may account for the increase in cases for the past 20 years. ******************************
Image Gallery
Benjamin Luft, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Stony Brook University Medical Center
Newswise --
Benjamin Luft, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Stony Brook University Medical Center, and colleagues
discovered that a certain clone of Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochete that causes Lyme disease, appears to be the most common strain causing Lyme disease in North America and Europe, and may account for the increase in cases for the past 20 years.
Their investigation and findings of the ospC-A clone are reported in the July 2008 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, which is currently available on line at
According to Dr. Luft, Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the United States with more than 20,000 cases reported annually.
While B. burgdorferi is the primary pathogen in the United States, clones of the pathogen are known to cause major disease. The ospC-A clone was one of the first strains ever identified.
In ``Wide Distribution of a High-Virulence Borrelia burgdorferi Clone in Europe and North America,'' Dr. Luft and colleagues detail various methods of genetic testing of 68 B. burgdorferi isolates from Europe and North America.
Based on the findings of their tests, the researchers concluded that the ospC-A clone dispersed rapidly and widely in the recent past and in both regions of the world.
``I believe this discovery will make an important contribution since it identifies an identical and high virulence clone of Borrelia in both Europe and North America,'' said Dr. Luft. ``This may explain the recent spread of Lyme disease in North America.''
The researchers report that the isolates of the clone were prevalent on both continents and uniform in DNA sequences, which suggests a recent trans-oceanic migration.
More specifically, they explained:
``The European and North American Populations of B. burgdorferi sensu stricto have diverged significantly because of genetic drift.
Plasmid genes evolved independently and showed various effects of adaptive divergence and diversifying selection...genetic variation within the two continents contributed to most of the total sequence diversity, which suggests recent common ancestry, migration, or both, between the European and North American populations.''
The research was funded partly by the Lyme Disease Association and the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Luft's colleagues include:
Wei-Gang Qui, Ph.D., and William D. McCaig, Hunter College of the City University of New York;
John F. Bruno and Yun Xu of Stony Brook University;
Ian Livey, Baxter Vaccine AG,
Orth/Donau, Austria, and
Martin M. Schriefer, of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, Fort Collins, Colorado.
� 2008 Newswise. All Rights Reserved. ********************************************
wow, thanks for finding and posting!
Posted by minimonkey (Member # 8693) on :
I've been thinking about this-- are we sure this is even a new strain? It seems like possible backpedaling to me -- "oh, wow -- look! There's this *other* strain that *does* cause disease! It isn't that we failed to diagnose and treat the disease all along, it's that there's actually a totally different bug out there that has been making people sick" etc.
Interesting timing coming on the heels of the Blumenthal press release, etc.
Posted by Tincup (Member # 5829) on :
HOLY COW! You'll never believe this! The article you posted proves it! Hold the mustard- the onions are coming to town!
Because..
The IDSA has been proven to be...
WRONG AGAIN!!!!
Yep... I know it is hard to believe that one bunch of IDiots can be sooooooooo wrong soooooooooo many times!
Here is what it says in their guidelines... and what they have gotten away with for YEARS by insisting...
"Because of the differences in the species of Borrelia that cause Lyme disease in North America (B. burgdorferi), compared with those that cause this infection in Eurasia (B. burgdorferi, Borrelia afzelii, and Borrelia garinii), recommendations were based, whenever possible, on studies conducted in the United States."
Meaning THEIR studies, of course.
Because they said this... they didn't have to include European literature when doing studies or guidelines, which ALSO, like THIS ONE, proved them WRONG!
I can't say how angry I get every time I see stuff that proves them wrong. We've KNOWN they were wrong.. and there IS literature all over the place proving it... but they get away with this %^&%$#^&*(*%$#@$&( all the time!
HowHORRIBLE can one bunch of ^%&$*((^%#%@ be?
Jail would be too good for the whole bunch of them!
And yes minimonkey... good thinking! That concept and the, "well they must have been bitten again" garbage they are trying to shove down out throats... well it is all a bunch of "bulls-eye".
GIVE ME A BREAK!
Posted by sparkle7 (Member # 10397) on :
It's a cover-up, Tincup... Always has been & always will be.
We are all expendable. There will be no end to the B$... They are never going to admit culpability.
We have to look out for ourselves.
Posted by Vermont_Lymie (Member # 9780) on :
Wow. Unbelievable.
What does "clone" mean in this context?? Does that imply genetic engineering, proving that it is the weaponized version???
Posted by minimonkey (Member # 8693) on :
I suspect they are referring to natural replication rather than genetic engineering, as they are talking about "genetic drift", but the use of the term "clone" is a tad odd nonetheless.... "clone" implies a near or exact match, which doesn't then support their logic very well, as it seems they are indicating an entirely different strain has been identified.
The term 'virulent' is also odd to hear used scientifically this way, as that usually implies a virus, not a bacterium...?
Why not simply say 'variant strain' and 'pathogenic' instead? Weird.
Posted by minimonkey (Member # 8693) on :
Okay, I read the actual article -- they are indeed talking about a natural cloning process of recombination that is apparently relatively common in bacteria.
Nonetheless, they are talking about a widespread and disease causing variant, and that seems to be something of an admission that the problem is worse than it had been reported to be, prior to this finding.
[ 26. June 2008, 10:44 PM: Message edited by: minimonkey ]
Posted by Marnie (Member # 773) on :
OspC a is something "new"? Did I miss something?
"Outer surface protein C (OspC) of the Lyme disease spirochetes is an important virulence factor that has potential utility for vaccine development.
Of the 21 OspC types that have been identified,
it has been postulated that types A, B, I, and K are specifically associated with invasive infections.
Through an analysis of isolates collected from patients in Maryland we found that OspC types C, D, and N are also associated with invasive infections.
This observation suggests that there is greater diversity in the group of OspC types associated with invasive infection than has been previously suggested.
Detailed knowledge of the antigenic structure of OspC is essential for vaccine development.
It is a popular misconception that Lyme disease was discovered in the late 1970's in Lyme, Connecticut. However, medical literature is actually rich with more than a century of writing about the condition, although most of it has been published only in Europe.
FACT: Doctor Martin Cooper invented the modern cell phone. Cooper is also known as the first person to make a call on a cell phone. His groundbreaking call took place in April of 1973 in New York.
The first record of a condition associated with Lyme disease dates back to 1883 in Breslau, Germany, where a physician named Alfred Buchwald described a degenerative skin disorder now known as acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans (ACA).
FACT: 1752 - Franklin is said to have performed the famous experiment of flying a kite during a thunderstorm, which led to the discovery that lightning and electricity were somehow related.
FACT: 1800 - Italian-born physicist Alessandro Volta constructed the voltaic pile, later known as the electric battery, the first device to produce a steady electric current.
FACT: 1831 - Electricity became viable for use in technology. English scientist Michael Faraday created the electric dynamo, a crude precursor of modern power generators.
FACT: 1879 - Thomas Alva Edison invented the light bulb.
In a 1909 meeting of the Swedish Society of Dermatology, where a physician named Arvid Afzelius presented research about an expanding, ringlike lesion he had observed. Afzelius published his work 12 years later and speculated that the rash came from the bite of an Ixodes tick.
Throughout the early twentieth century, associations were being made among many of the symptoms and signs that constitute Lyme disease. Some of these associations were: joint involvement in patients with late disease (1921), the link between the EM rash and neurologic problems (1922), psychiatric symptoms in patients with the EM rash (1930), patients with benign lymphocytomas observed to also have either EM or ACA (1934), and the description of heart involvement that appeared in patients with both the EM rash and arthritic symptoms (1934).
By mid-century, physicians were experimenting with still-novel antibiotics and reporting successful results.
FACT: 1934 - Apex, an experimental radio broadcasting system was introduced in the United States that used high frequencies between roughly 25 and 42 MHz to achieve high fidelity sound with less static and distortion on AM stations.
FACT: 1939 - apex stations were operating in 34 cities in 22 states.
FACT: 1939 - the FCC began encouraging apex stations broadcasting in AM to consider the change to the technically superior FM system.
In 1970, for the first time, an incidence of EM known with certainty to have been acquired in the United States was reported by Rudolph Scrimenti, who diagnosed and treated a patient who had been bitten by a tick while hunting grouse in Wisconsin and acquired the disease.
FACT: 1969 - Louis Dorren invented the Quadraplex system of single station, discrete, compatible four-channel FM broadcasting.
FACT: 1947- the underlying technology that makes cell phones possible was invented, though they were not actually used until the late 1950s.
FACT: 1970 - hexagonal cells and a feature called handover was invented and a mobile phone could be employed on long trips that required moving in and out of cells.
In 1976, the first US case of clustering of this disease was reported by researchers at the Naval Submarine Medical in Southwestern Connecticut.
In 1977, physician Allen Steere et al described the first clustering of the disease misdiagnosed as juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. They named this condition 'Lyme arthritis'.
FACT: After 1973, cell phones took off slowly, partly due to their large size, highly cost, and relative uselessness for most individuals.
In the early 1980's, an entomologist at the United States Rocky Mountain Laboratories of the National Institutes of Health by the name of Willy Burgdorfer, MD, Ph.D., was investigating outbreaks of Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
Research scientists Jorge Benach and Edward Bosler, Ph.D. collaborated in the dogged and dangerous work of gathering and testing ticks for disease-causing pathogens. During the course of the research, attention shifted from dog to black-legged ticks and in the fall of 1981, one of the batches of ticks yielded something dramatically new.
Burgdorfer noticed an embryonic form of parasite in the body fluid of two of the ticks. Guided by his extensive knowledge of the early scientific writings of European researchers, he undertook a very close inspection of the tick--and found poorly stained, sluggish spirochetes. Within a year, the spirochetes had been named Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), in his honor, and definitely identified as the causative agent of Lyme disease. Dr. Burgdorfer was the partner in the successful effort to culture the spirochete, along with Alan Barbour, MD.
Next came a period of consolidating and expanding of knowledge. After the discovery of Bb and the diseases associated with it, researchers began to learn more about how the infection lodges itself in the body.
In 1985, Paul Duray, a Lyme disease researcher, declared that the Lyme disease bacterium disseminates itself through the body early in the course of infection. The prevailing wisdom at the time was that infection was slow to. Duray's findings are now the prevailing thought.
Also in 1985, Burgdorfer was able to demonstrate that ticks infected with the Lyme spirochete could be found across the country.
FACT: The mid 1980s brought about fully automated cellular networks which mildly decreased the price and increased the amount of people using cell phones in their cars.
In 1988, the LDF was founded and started the major push to bring Lyme disease in the spotlight. It was the effective partnerships among patients, government officials, and researchers that enabled volunteers around the world to bring Lyme disease the attention that has helped make it a household term.
FACT: It was not until the early to mid 1990s that cell phones were made small enough and cheap enough to appeal to the average consumer.
From - The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and The Center for the Advancement of Genomics (TCAG), The J. Craig Venter Science Foundation, The Joint Technology Center, and the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives (IBEA)
In the mid-1970s, a geographic clustering of an unusual rheumatoid arthritis-like condition was reported in Connecticut.
This syndrome, Lyme disease, proved to be a newly recognized disorder characterized by some or all of the following mainfestations:
an initial erythematous annular rash, flu-like symptoms, neurologic complications, and arthritis in about 50% of untreated patients.
In the United States, the disease occurs primarily in three geographic regions including the Northeast, Midwest, and far western parts of California and Oregon These areas include the ranges of various species of Ixodes ticks, the primary vector of Lyme disease.
Lyme disease is now the most common tick-transmitted illness in the United States and has also been reported in other parts of the Northern hemisphere, particularly in western Europe.
In the early-1980s, a novel spirochete, called Borrelia burgdorferi, was isolated and cultured from the mid-gut of Ixodes ticks, and subsequently from patients with Lyme disease.
B. burgdorferi resembles other spirochetes in that it is a highly specialized, motile, two-membrane, spiral-shaped bacteria which lives primarily as an extracellular pathogen.
One of the most striking features of B. burgdorferi as compared with other eubacteria is its unusual genome, which includes a linear chromosome approximately one megabase in size and numerous linear and circular plasmids.
Long-term culture of B. burgdorferi results in a loss of some plasmids and changes in expressed protein profiles.
Associated with the loss of plasmids is a loss in the ability of the organism to infect laboratory animals, suggesting that the plasmids encode key genes involved in virulence.
B. burgdorferi may persist in humans and animals for months or years following initial infection, despite a robust humoral immune response.
B. burgdorferi is susceptible to antibiotics in vitro, however, there are contradictory reports as to the efficacy of antibiotics in vivo.
Consequently, considerable attention has focused on the development of a vaccine for Lyme disease.
Current evidence suggests humoral immunity plays an important role in prevention of infection and resolution of disease; however, one of the difficulties in developing a meaningful strategy for immunization is that it is not understood what aspects of humoral and cell-mediated immunity are required to counter established infection.
Because of its importance as a human and animal pathogen and the value of complete genome sequence information for understanding its life cycle and advancing drug and vaccine development, TIGR sequenced the genome of the type strain (B31) for B. burgdorferi using the random sequencing method previously described (Fleischmann et al., 1995; Fraser et al., 1995; Bult et al., 1996; Tomb et al., 1997).
The isolate of B. burgdorferi 31 used for this project contains a total of 12 linear and 9 circular plasmids.
-----
Doesn't this sound a little odd? I may be ignorant of advanced science but it just sounds odd to me.
One of the most striking features of Borrelia burgdorferi as compared with other eubacteria is its unusual genome, which includes a linear chromosome approximately one megabase in size and numerous linear and circular plasmids.
Long-term culture of Borrelia burgdorferi results in a loss of some plasmids and changes in expressed protein profiles.
Associated with the loss of plasmids is a loss in the ability of the organism to infect laboratory animals, suggesting that the plasmids encode key genes involved in virulence.
Borrelia burgdorferi grows slowly compared to most bacteria.
Each spirochete divides into two cells after 12 to 24 hours of elongation.
Although the organism can be cultured in media, continuous passage may result in biological changes resulting in a population quite different from their naturally occurring ancestors.
Posted by Anneke (Member # 7939) on :
Thank you sooo much for posting this, and for all that made comments. It helped me to understand it better.
MARNIE!!! I was so happy to see your name. you have been missed.
Anneke
Posted by Blackstone (Member # 9453) on :
Lets not freak out about the use of "clone" here - this does not suggest genetic engineering in this context. It simply refers to one genotype specific form of lyme, that has been identified as being more prevalent and hardy than others.
Marnie has the correct data here.
Posted by lymebytes (Member # 11830) on :
It does "imply" a natural "morphing" but I don't buy it.
So basically I am wondering if anyone bitten prior to 20 years ago, LD was just easier to treat AND were there NO co-infections 20+ years ago as Dr. H indicated in Under Our Skin.
It is like the whole bug has been altered to be tougher and more virulent - on purpose...I could be wrong...yeah, that's it I am wrong, I mean our government would certainly tell us! I expect them soon to divulge "top secret" documents from Plumb Island...I mean they'd have to tell us right? Yeah right...
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
![[cussing]](graemlins/cussing.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[tsk]](graemlins/tsk.gif)