Lyme Ever Cured?

July 30, 2000

kay (b10g7@...) wrote:

hi jaqui,,

yours is the underlying " chronic " question.

there seem to be a few ideas replayed on this list about

this issue. i am sure you will get some varying responses.

one is: lyme disease is not curable. the best you can hope

for is remission, with or without continuing antibiotics (abx) ...

another: the people who are cured do not hang around on

lists to talk about it. some people are cured however we

don't hear from them as they are no longer concerned with

the disease and are back to living a regular life.

mine: if we believe we can not be cured then we probably

will not be cured. if we are constantly having to prove

how sick we are (which we do because of the crappy medical

MISeducation about these diseases) our energy is heading

in the direction of a state of being unwell and therefore

(energy) is not available to heal us ...

the only consistent " truth " i see is nothing is resolved

quickly with this disease

hope, kay.

-------------------------------------------

Hi Kay,

I really appreciate your research. Perhaps my wife

and I fall into another category: Those who are not

sick, who would never have sought out medical attention because

of symptoms, but who have discovered they have Lyme almost

by accident.

For us, taking abx (I'm doing 4 500-mg Biaxin capsules

per day plus a couple of Vantin's) is a calculated risk,

a choice, hopefully, of the lesser of evils -- the greater

evil being gradually consumed by the spirochetes until

irreparable damage has been done -- although Mr. ,

a victim of the Tuscagee syphillis study, lasted (I read

here} until the age of 102.

Perhaps our lack of symptoms may have something to do

with " thick blood " as described below (repeating what

was already presented to the list). I have been taking

5 aspirins a day for years because of osteoarthritis

(it works for me); and, in addition since 1995, I have

been taking coumadin because of atrial fibrillation.

My wife has a low platelet count.

I concur with the opinion that, at present, there is no

cure for Lyme -- only holding actions, which aim to slow

destruction, as are used on AIDS victims. Massive government

research to develop a cure for Lyme should be a top

political priority.

Equally important, especially for me, is the development

of direct tests for the presence of Lyme in one's body.

Our Lyme was discovered with a labelled antibody fluorescence

microscopy test developed by Dr. Lida Matman and

done at both the Bowen Laboratory in Florida and the

Laboratory in Florida -- for addresses and further info,

please see http://www.centurytel.net/tjs11/bug/l2.htm

I have questions about this test which have not yet been

answered, such as what is the exact procedure and where

(specific address) do the labelled antibodies come from.

Because of the importance of test development,

I am also repeating the immediately below submission

to the group. Finally, I'm enclosing an article on a

promising development in fluorescence microscopy.

Jack

-------------------------------------------

Source: " kay " (b10g7@...), 7-29-00

Schutzer, MD

Division of Allergy and Immunology

University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ - NJ Medical School

The Immune Response and its Application toward Diagnosis

The immune response to an infectious agent involves

complex interaction among T helper and suppressor cells,

macrophages, and B cells. The B cells which differentiate

into antibody producing cells first produce IgM,

then IgG, then IgA to the antigenic components of the

agent. Initially, and in certain other instances, the

predominance of the antibody may be found bound to the

agent in an antigen-antibody or immune complex.

Serologic diagnosis of infection with the spirochete

Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), the cause of Lyme disease has

been hampered by the variability among existing tests as

well as the prolonged time needed for the humoral response

to reach thresholds of detection by conventional assays. As

specific antibody (Ab) made be found bound to an infectious

agent, especially early in the infection, and during active

infection, we hypothesized that this could be occurring

in Lyme disease. We isolated and dissociated serum immune

complexes from Lyme disease patients, fulfilling modified

CDC criteria, and controls.

Immune complexes were first collected by polyethylene

glycol (PEG). Following dissociation by high pH,

the dissociated constituents were analyzed by ELISA and

Western blots. Specificity of the reactive Ab was evaluated

by probing for the target antigen using monoclonal and

polyclonal Abs, as well as recombinant proteins.

Complexed Ab to Bb was found in 10 of 11 very early

cases(p=2 x 10E-7), 55 of 56 (p= or less than 10E-3)

symptomatic patients with Lyme disease, 0 of 50 healthy

controls, 2 of 50 patients from the endemic areas with

other diseases including those likely to have elevated

levels of immune complexes, 13 of 13 (p= or less than

E-8) persistently seronegative patients who had erythema

migrans and a subset of 4 of 4 who were also positive on

a T cell proliferative assay to Bb, and 0 of 8 patients

who had recovered.

In the early acute cases complexed IgM was the first

antibody to be detected. Predictive values (PV), based

upon a sensitivity of 98% and a specificity of 98% were

PV+ of 36% (prevalence of 1%) to 98.6% (prevalence of 50%)

and PV- of 99.9% to 99.7% between these prevalences.

The data suggest that this relatively simple technique

has potential to support or exclude a clinical diagnosis

of early as well as active Lyme disease.

-------------------------------------------

paleotechnics@... wrote:

In response to the possibility that there might be a genetic factor,

Berg is proposing a theory that some microbes in some people can

throw them into a hypercoagulable state (thick blood) usually due to

genetic blood clotting disorder. The coagulation dampens the immune

system and prevents you from getting all the way better. Lyme is one of

the suspected pathogenes.

Treatment is with anti coagulation medication

concurent with antibiotics which cleans up the vascular system exposing

infectous organisms to antibiotics, and allows the thinned blood to get

around where it should.

-------------------------------------------

The following article is excerpted from Scince News, 7-22-00:

Week of July 22, 2000; Vol. 158, No. 4

Device Sees More inside Live Cells

By P. Weiss

The delicate touch of visible light allows scientists to

peer into living cells without disrupting them. However,

to discern the subtlest details, optical microscopes have

long been considered too crude a tool. Instead, researchers

have developed techniques such as electron microscopy to

make out the finest features, but only in dead specimens.

Enter the stimulated emission depletion microscope. This

novel optical device harmlessly resolves fluorescently

labeled bits of living cells that are smaller than the

so-called diffraction limit, say its developers at the Max

Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen,

Germany.

Because light bends, or diffracts, around the edges of

objects, ordinary optical microscopes can discern features

no closer than a half-wavelength apart, a distance of 200

nanometers (nm) or so.

Beating the diffraction limit, the new prototype

instrument can resolve depth to one-sixth of what the

best conventional optical microscopes can achieve. Its

horizontal resolution comes in under one-half the

other instruments' limit, report A. Klar and his

colleagues in the July 18 Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences.

Considering all three dimensions, the device can

distinguish structures only one-eighteenth the minimum

volume discernable by diffraction-limited equipment,

the researchers say.

" The work by [the Göttingen team] has the potential to

transform the fluorescence microscopy 'Renaissance' we are

currently experiencing into an 'Enlightenment Millennium,' "

says Shimon Weiss of Lawrence Berkeley (Calif.) National

Laboratory in a commentary in the same journal issue ...

Like other so-called confocal microscopes, the novel

instrument works by focusing a laser inside cells tagged

with nontoxic fluorescent molecules. By scanning the light

across horizontal levels in the cell and then assembling

the slices in a computer, researchers can generate a

three-dimensional fluorescent image of the cell's interior.

Typically, an oblong laser spot created by a confocal

microscope has a diffraction-limited size of about 600

nm in depth and 200 nm in girth, says team leader Stefan

W. Hell. What enables the new microscope to both beat

the diffraction limit and reduce distortion from its

oblong spot, he explains, is a one-two combination of

laser pulses.

The device generates a 0.2-picosecond pulse of green light,

which creates the typical oblong illumination. Immediately

afterward, it fires an oddly shaped and much longer-lasting

red pulse into the area excited by the green pulse. The

red squelches fluorescence from the green light anywhere

the pulses overlap.

Because the second pulse is doughnut-shaped, with blobs

of light above and below its doughnut hole, the red

light confines fluorescence to a roughly spherical spot

100 nm across. Comparing the green oblong to an American

football, Hell says that the final truncated spot resembles

a tennis ball. Thanks to that smaller spot size, he adds,

the microscope can scan with a finer point and discern

unprecedentedly small features.

From Science News, Vol. 158, No. 4, July 22, 2000, p. 52.

References & Sources Week of July 22, 2000; Vol. 158, No. 4

Device Sees More inside Live Cells A new type of optical

microscope, which can discern objects smaller than a

supposedly fundamental limit for visible-light viewing,

may make it possible to see finer details of the insides

of living cells.

References:

Klar, T.A. . . . and S.W. Hell. 2000. Fluorescence

microscopy with diffraction resolution barrier broken by

stimulated emission. Proceedings of the National Academy

of Sciences 97(July 18):8206.

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