Tic's and Lyme!!

[Sheldon]

It's that time of the year in many parts of the country so BEWARE!!!
You do not have to live in the country to get a tic... but if you have Ginnie hens, they love to hunt and eat them... Watch the video...

~7~ SEVEN LYME FACTS THAT COULD HAVE SAVED ME!!!

[Herr Heckler Koch]

In a particular location, adults from the previous generation are active from March to July and then newly moulted from nymphs adults are active from September to December. The nymphs are active from May to November and they are the worst - smallest (~1 mm), most numerous and infectious. The larvae are active from July, when the hatch starts, until November - but they are no hazard, non-infectious until after their first meal of infected mouse blood (thank goodness, they're smallest ½ mm, most numerous).

We anticipate an exceptional year for numerous adult and nymph ticks with high rates of infection due to high prevalence in their mouse hosts. We've already had at least four reportable cases of Lyme Disease in a population of <1000. The first association of Lyme Disease with Borrelia Burgdorferi was in Wisconsin in 1986.

I recommend Ecology and environmental management of Lyme disease, edited by Howard S. Ginsburg (Rutgers, 1993). Ginsburg is eminent. My first training was in medical entomology in 1967/8.

For tick eradication I recommend Tick Tubes by Daminix ($4/ea, $2.50/ea in 1000's). My outdoor work clothes are soaked with Permethrin.

[F350]

A friend of mine in NE Iowa has Lyme...... it is not something you want to mess with.

The video suggests tucking pant legs into your sock; I like boots and when out I use duct tape to tape pant legs closed and to boot tops closing all potential access, tuck in shirt tails and treat all outdoor cloths with permethrin (treat the cloths DO NOT spray on skin like Off) you can get bottles which mix with water, soak clothes and let dry, 1 treatment will last ~ 5 washings.

[Herr Heckler Koch]

Some think that the trousers tucked in socks sock's weave make little hiding holes for nymph ticks that are small and quest at boot top height. The larger 2½ mm adults quest from ½ meter to a meter high, the height of deer legs/shoulder neck.

If one work with ticks/in tick areas, permethrin treated gaiters are better.

It takes at least 24 hours for the Borellia spirochetes to move from the adult tick midgut to the mouth parts. After 24 hours embedded the probability of infecting the host rises significantly. Not all adults/nymphs are infectious. No egg is infectious and larvae only after feeding on an infected mouse.

[Herr Heckler Koch]

The military has lifetime permethrin treated fabric that will be available on the open market soon. They call 100 washings the effective lifetime.

Erithremia migrans, the bulls-eye rash, is the best indication (obvious and distinctive) of infection. Unfortunately EM is not always present. Absent EM, flu-like symptoms are presumptive. Prompt antibiotic treatment is effective.

I had the facial paralysis as a teenager, not caused by Lyme Disease.

[Xulld]

For pets advantix works like magic. (I believe it also uses permethrine for the tick component of the treatment)

[Herr Heckler Koch]

Yes, Advantix by Bayer does contain permethrin combined with Imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid insecticide. Permethrin is chemically related to pyrethrin. The important thing is permethrin MUST NOT BE USED ON CATS or where it can get into running water.

Excess permethrin and neonicotinoid solutions are disposed of by evaporation/photo-degradation from an impervious surface - pavement. As usual, the solution to pollution is dilution.

'Four-post' deer feeders apply permethrin to their head, neck and shoulders where they can't groom and the ticks preferred site to embed.

[Herr Heckler Koch]

http://www.wtop.com/209/2903227/Stud...across-Midwest

Fearing for his safety, Jorgenson shot and killed the animals.

"They're so thick out here, it's unbelievable," Jorgenson, 58, said of the mountain lions he blames for "wiping out" the deer population around his home near the 1,700-resident town of Watford City. "Two years ago, it'd be nothing to see 200 to 300 mule deer out there; this past winter, we never saw more than 20. We have carcasses all over where they've been killed."

There are more effective ways of eradicating Lyme Disease than wiping out the deer population but it will do for the short term.

[XD40coyote]

Yup, whenever I OC, I am sure to check myself for ticks. Also when I get agitated/anxious I get some slight nervous tics. Guineas are also great for alerting me to foxes stalking poultry, so I can compare CC draw to OC draw.

[Sheldon]

http://www.wtop.com/209/2903227/Stud...across-Midwest


There are more effective ways of eradicating Lyme Disease than wiping out the deer population but it will do for the short term.

Actually... Ginnie hens besides being good watch dogs also think ticks are delicious and actively hunt and eat them, a pair will clear a good sized area.....

[Aknazer]

When I first saw this thread I was thinking "what do Troops In Contact have to do with Lyme?"

[Dreamer]

My mother had Lymes, and it was a clear contributor to her early demise, as it was not identified until it progressed to the point of causing cognitive impairment. It caused her rheumatoid arthritis to accelerate, and effected her ability to walk, and it also effected her circulatory system.

My wife has Lymes too, but it was diagnosed early. She has health issues still (after 2 full courses of treatment) but she is doing fine.

Lymes is a TERRIBLE disease, and most doctors STILL don't believe it even exists, and will often fight you tooth an nail if you suspect it, and want to get tests done. The reason why is there is no real approved course of treatment, and they can't make a known amount of money on your treatment.

There is no "cure" for Lymes, even if they catch it early--just treatment...

[Herr Heckler Koch]

and most doctors STILL don't believe it even exists, and will often fight you tooth an nail if you suspect it, and want to get tests done. The reason why is there is no real approved course of treatment, and they can't make a known amount of money on your treatment. There is no "cure" for Lymes, even if they catch it early--just treatment...

That is not true unless you believe that there is no cure for a simple bacterium (as there is not for any virus). There is nothing mysterious or magical about the spirochete bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and the antibiotics of choice, doxycycline (in adults), amoxicillin (in children), erythromycin (for pregnant women) and ceftriaxone. Alternative choices are cefuroxime and cefotaxime.

Presumptive tests are relatively inexpensive and presumptive only. Definitive tests like polymerase chain reaction, immunoassay and Western Blot are expensive, in the margin, for one individual, probably exceedingly expensive.

Western medical doctors, MD's, know Lyme Disease exists, its symptoms and treatment. There is disagreement with the holistic/alternative home medicine community on the existence of chronic effects of Lyme Disease and even of its chronic symptoms. For instance, there is no differential diagnosis from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. At best Chronic Lyme Disease Syndrome is very poorly characterized and that by a special interest community (see Morgellons).

[Herr Heckler Koch]

http://phys.org/news/2012-06-lyme-di...s-red-fox.html

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/06/12/1204536109

Abstract

Lyme disease is the most prevalent vector-borne disease in North America, and both the annual incidence and geographic range are increasing. The emergence of Lyme disease has been attributed to a century-long recovery of deer, an important reproductive host for adult ticks. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that Lyme disease risk may now be more dynamically linked to fluctuations in the abundance of small-mammal hosts that are thought to infect the majority of ticks. The continuing and rapid increase in Lyme disease over the past two decades, long after the recolonization of deer, suggests that other factors, including changes in the ecology of small-mammal hosts may be responsible for the continuing emergence of Lyme disease. We present a theoretical model that illustrates how reductions in small-mammal predators can sharply increase Lyme disease risk. We then show that increases in Lyme disease in the northeastern and midwestern United States over the past three decades are frequently uncorrelated with deer abundance and instead coincide with a range-wide decline of a key small-mammal predator, the red fox, likely due to expansion of coyote populations. Further, across four states we find poor spatial correlation between deer abundance and Lyme disease incidence, but coyote abundance and fox rarity effectively predict the spatial distribution of Lyme disease in New York. These results suggest that changes in predator communities may have cascading impacts that facilitate the emergence of zoonotic diseases, the vast majority of which rely on hosts that occupy low trophic levels.

[Herr Heckler Koch]

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/pdfs/10-147...d_of_print.pdf

Borrelia miyamotoi is distantly related to B. burgdorferi and transmitted by the same hard-body tick species. We report 46 cases of B. miyamotoi infection in humans and compare the frequency and clinical manifestations of this infection with those caused by B. garinii and B. burgdorferi infection. All 46 patients lived in Russia and had influenza-like illness with fever as high as 39.5°C; relapsing febrile illness occurred in 5 (11%) and erythema migrans in 4 (9%). In Russia, the rate of B. miyamotoi infection in Ixodes persulcatus ticks was 1%–16%, similar to rates in I. ricinus ticks in western Europe and I. scapularis ticks in the United States. B. miyamotoi infection may cause relapsing fever and Lyme disease–like symptoms throughout the Holarctic region of the world because of the widespread prevalence of this pathogen in its ixodid tick vectors.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-0...e-disease.html
New tick-borne disease discovered 09/20/2011

"Yale School of Public Health researchers in collaboration with Russian scientists have discovered a new tick-borne bacterium that might be causing disease in the United States and elsewhere. Their findings appear in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

This new disease is caused by a spirochete bacterium called Borrelia miyamotoi, which is distantly related to Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Yale professor of epidemiology Durland Fish and colleagues found this new spirochete, previously known only from ticks in Japan, in deer ticks in Connecticut in 2001, but did not know if it caused disease in humans.

The bacteria have since been found in all tick species that transmit Lyme disease throughout the United States and Europe. By collaborating with a medical team studying tick-borne diseases in Russia, Yale researchers were able to compare disease symptoms in patients infected by the new spirochete in Russia with those having Lyme disease in the United States.

The new disease is characterized by high fever, which relapses without treatment and may be confused with Lyme disease. There are currently no diagnostic tests available, but Yale researchers have recently received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a diagnostic test procedure to look for cases of this new disease in the United States.

"This is the first time we will have a chance to identify a new tick-borne disease in the United States based upon evidence that the agent occurs in ticks," said Fish, co-author of the paper and co-investigator on the NIH grant along with Peter Krause, a senior research scientist in the Division of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases.

They report finding B. miyamotoi in about 2 percent of the deer ticks in the Northeast and Upper Midwest and have been conducting experiments with mice in the laboratory that become infected when fed upon by deer ticks. Because bites from deer ticks cause more than 25,000 cases of Lyme disease each year, according to the CDC, the Yale team is gearing up to determine if there is any illness that is caused by B. miyamotoi infection in the United States."

[Herr Heckler Koch]

Here's an anecdote illustrating the expensive testing to support a diagnosis successful and correct.

Tickborne Relapsing Fever in a Mother and Newborn Child — Colorado, 2011
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwr...cid=mm6110a3_w