posted
Does anyone know of neuromuscular conditions that overlap with Lyme or has anyone been diagnosed with one?
I am wondering if I might have myasthenia gravis or something, as I have a lot of the symptoms including respiratory distress. I also read that it can be induced by various antibiotics including penicillin (which I was injecting) and also by magnesium (which I was injecting).
I also have a lot of the symptoms of Guillian-barre.
I don't know if these symptoms I'm having are Lyme or something else. I started developing a progressive weakness around the time I began injecting Bicillin. It seemed to be helping with a lot of my Lyme symptoms so I kept at it.
Ultimately, I fell into a total collapse and now my chest muscles and diaphragm often feel too weak to breathe and I go into very scary respiratory distress episodes.
If anyone was diagnosed with a related neuromuscular condition, can you tell me how you were diagnosed, what the symptoms were, etc? I'm about to get the blood tests for myasthenia gravis but I can't get to a neurologist for more testing as I'm too bedbound.
Posts: 929 | From Massachusetts | Registered: Oct 2007
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bettyg
Unregistered
posted
mcs, i just checked to see if mya... gravis was on the list of 300 other illnesses overlapping lyme; it isn't.
guillian barr is an overlap though. sorry, i don't know anything more than this. my best to you.
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nenet
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 13174
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Im sorry you're going through this. I wish I could better understand your description of the respiratory distress, as there can be lung involvement in Lyme and Babesia, that causes air hunger which feels like the lungs are not able to work properyl/inhale all the way.
It feels to me like my lungs are getting weaker and smaller, and no matter what I do I can't get enough oxygen. It eventually passes, quicker if I can remain calm - but others here have mentioned having these symptoms to a worse degree.
Howvever I think it is wise of you to get tested for this possibility. One thing to remember is that Lyme (like Syphilus before it) can create conditions that domino into all kinds of disease-states. I would reckon myasthenia gravis could be one of these, but I am not a Doctor or research scientist.
As to myasthenia gravis like symptoms and any relation to Borrelia b., You should search both terms together in Google, or Google Scholar, and PubMed.
Here is a tiny sample of what I found in the first several results of a Google search for Myasthenia Gravis Borrelia:
1. This one seems to point to a direct cause or a misdiagnosis, or at the very least an overlap of symptoms with Lyme and Myasthenia Gravis. This woman had Lyme "3 times", and yet it wasn't considered a suspect in her condition?!?:
(you can download and read the first page by clicking the "Free Preview" pdf icon link.)
"Psychosocial aspects in patients with myasthenia gravis"
Case history
"The patient's complaints were chronic back pain in the neck for about six months (spinal CT and spinal MRI(twice), SSEP, MEP, NCV/EMG, EEG, laboratory investigations: WBC, inflammatory parameters, GAD-Ab: all normal; borrelia burgdorferi: 3 times: slightly elevated IgG titres),
`lack of appetite' and weight loss (gastroscopy, coloscopy, abdominalultrasound, laboratory: all normal). Repeatedly she reported `respiratory troubles', especially under pressure (chest X-ray,lung function testing, lung scintigraphy, thoracal CT, echocardiography, ECG, specific laboratory testing: all normal).
After consulting 17 general and specialised physicians and before offering her an early retirement,a psychiatric investigation was carried out with results as follows: ``moaning, whining patient, latent aggressive, blaming..." [End of Free Preview]"
I think here we have another possible case of a disease state being blamed on autoimmunity because they don't understand Lyme Disease and know how to clinically diagnose rather than depend on current poor testing.
If researchers and Doctors do not understand that Lyme can go Chronic and cause a whole spectrum of disease states and symptoms, then they won't know to even look at it as a possibility. Instant blinders.
2. And another seeming connection (in my non-expert opinion):
"Lipopeptides of Borrelia burgdorferi outer surface proteins induce Th1 phenotype development in alphabeta T-cell receptor transgenic mice."
* Myasthenia gravis-like syndrome induced by expression of interferon gamma in the neuromuscular junction. J Exp Med. 1995 Feb 1;181(2):547-557. [PubMed]
Looks to my untrained eyes like Borrelia Burgdorferi can create circumstances that can lead to a Myasthenia gravis-like set of symptoms.
nenet
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 13174
posted
You might also want to browse through this Googble Books result. If you are not familiar with this service, you scroll up and down, or click page back or forward, you might be able to get quite a bit of info. You can also search for "neuromuscular", for instance, in the search field by the page arrows.
Of course we have to keep in mind it might have some IDSA-like tendencies to ignore chronic Lyme or some things Lyme might be capable of. For an example of IDSA-like writing, even though there is yet NO proof of an autoimmunity process in Lyme, they mention it as a possible cause, with no research citations or evidence.
So anyway, taken with a grain or a pile of salt, this book seems to actually get some things right:
"Clinical Infectious Disease" By David Schlossberg
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