I hope you have placed a comments on the many sites I listed in my post. I believe any opportunity to make our voices heard, not to mentioned there may be hope that Joni Mitchell or one of her agents, may read what we post and help lead her to where to get help, is an opportunity lost if we don't speak up.
I posted Sticker's link on my comments on the various sites. Thanks for the other link.
In the article at the first link left by Rivendell, (Middleveen et al), you'll notice that one of the methods they used to detect borrelia in Morgellons was Molecular Beacon probes developed by Dr Alan MacDonald.
These are absolutely accurate, state-of-the art and it's almost impossible for them to throw up a false positive.
The probes have also found Borrelia in ALZHEIMERS.
I can't emphasise too much just how significant that is - that is HUGE.
I recently had my reference to this fact deleted from the scientific forum F1000 by a hacker - F1000 staff helped me restore my comment.
We should all publicise this as much as possible, not only with regard to Morgellons, but also to ALZHEIMERS, which is responsible for most of the 44 MILLION cases of dementia in th world.
Elena
Posted by Rivendell (Member # 19922) on :
I just find this all fascinating, even though it is a tragedy that only the worst research becomes the standard used by the CDC and relied upon by the medical community.
When veterinarians understand that spirocetes are involved with this disease occurring in the hooves of cows and treat with antibiotics, why such ignorance within our medical community/research community about morgellons and lyme?
Hopefully this finding will open the door for morgellons patients and even help us to understand lyme better.
Posted by TX Lyme Mom (Member # 3162) on :
I attended the Morgellon's conference held in Austin last month (March 28-29) and she stated during her talk that she had found Borrelia spirochetes in vaginal epithelial cells from at least one patient (maybe more, don't remember for sure) and also in the epithelial cells sloughed off into a purged stool culture sample. These little details are almost hidden within her paper, and you have to look very closely to find them -- just a few brief words in one sentence.
During the informal social event held after the session, she made an informal comment that I found to mirror something that I had been thinking for many years but which I had never heard anyone else comment on before. She stated that the epithelial cells which line our intestinal mucosa and other internal mucosal cells (vaginal, upper respiratory) are very similar to the epithelial cells of our external skin, so it's logical that Borrelia would have an affinity for those cells. Those were not her exact words, but it's the gist of what she was trying to say.
We may recall that the pediatric GI doc Martin Fried, MD had reported finding Borrelia during colonoscopy exams, but I don't know if he ever published this finding or not because his work was done so long ago, long before immunological techniques were being employed to identify Bb so precisely.
This knowledge leads us to realize that if Borrelia can hide out intracellularly within the intestinal mucosa, then it helps us to understand how it can interfere with our digestion and absorption of nutrients. This helps explain also how it can interfere with hormone production which is dependent on proper absorption of fat-soluble nutrients.
Something else I learned at the conference is that the sensation reported by some Lyme patients of stinging ants crawling under their skin and biting them from the inside is another symptom of Morgellon's. The tiny fibers can often be seen under the skin of fair-skinned patients with the aid of a cheap little low-power microscope (60X) bought at Toys-R-Us, providing you know what to look for. These fibers are often different colors.
The fibers have now been positively identified as being of human origin -- namely collagen and keratin, manufactured by the fibroblasts and by the keratinocytes, according to Eva Sapi, PhD who is a co-author of Middleveen's paper.
Unfortunately, Eva Sapi was ill and her talk was given via Skype, but we had a chance to ask questions following her presentation. She had stated that she found both Helicobacter pylori and also Borrelia in her investigations, so I asked her to comment on the similarity in morphology between these two pathogens -- H. pylori being helical, of course, and Borrelia being spiral in shape. She responded, "Yes, this is Mother Nature's way for these pathogens to burrow into tissue, and it's very irritating to the tissues, so this is why the host cells respond by forming those little almost-invisible fibers which sometimes project out from the skin.
In other words, the term *delusional parasitosis* is no longer appropriate at all -- not when a cheap little toy microscope is sufficient to reveal their presence. The doctors who created this disparaging terminology have egg all over their faces now since the publication of Middleveen's and Sapi's paper.
Remember, they found spirochetes in 24 of 25 patients' samples! And the 25th patient in the cohort was a CDC positive patient on the basis of a physician-observed EM rash (and also other diagnositic criteria which I've forgotten about).
The significance of this paper is earth-shaking. It is no longer possible to deny the presence of living spirochetes in chronic Lyme patients, especially not those patients who have Morgellon's lesions or Morgellon's fibers poking out of their skin!!
Long live ILADS! The Big Bad Witches of the West -- the ID-iot IDSA docs -- are all dead, at long last! How long will it be though before they (IDSA docs) stop kicking and screaming and before Truth is acknowledged by all mainstream docs?!?!
Posted by lymeboy (Member # 24769) on :
The publishers of this day old article might want to hear from some of you: