Lyme Disease - New Research

[JAK]

Thought this might be of interest...
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...hub=TopStories

Canadian researchers are the first in the world to use high-resolution, 3-D imaging to create dramatic new footage of the bacterium that causes Lyme disease as it moves through the bloodstream of a living host...

[Tractor]

Interesting. Thank u for posting JAK.

[JAK]

Of course you know what's going to happen eh?

Thanks to this Canadian reasearch, we won't just get Lyme disease after hiking the AT.
We'll glow in the dark too.

[Survivor Dave]

Seems to be a lot of that lately. Dirty Harry and Knuckles, along with a few others came down with it. Luckily they are on the antibiotics and resumed their hikes. The dogs are being affected as well. Got this info from Trail Journals.

SD

[JAK]

We are getting some cases here in Saint John now, so I'm learning all I can.
We get deer in our back yard every night.

What exactly is the routine for checking for ticks? Best time of day? This would be for home, not just on the trail. My daughter's towelling herself off now, or my wife does it. What should I tell my wife about checking for ticks and so forth? Is there a link?

[JAK]

I suppose also someone has to check me out.
This might rejuvenate my marriage, and get me mowing the lawn more often.
Just a thought.

[Appalachian Tater]

We are getting some cases here in Saint John now, so I'm learning all I can.
We get deer in our back yard every night.

What exactly is the routine for checking for ticks? Best time of day? This would be for home, not just on the trail. My daughter's towelling herself off now, or my wife does it. What should I tell my wife about checking for ticks and so forth? Is there a link?

In information just released by the NYC DOH, less than a third of those with tick-borne diseases even recalled having a tick and it is not necessary to have a tick bite to have tick-borne disease included in the possible diagnoses a physician investigates.

I'm not saying you shouldn't check for ticks, I'm just saying that if you do get tick-borne disease, much more likely than not you may never have even known you had a tick. Certainly you should not consider checking for ticks your primary method of prevention--use DEET or other recommended repellants.

[Appalachian Tater]

This might rejuvenate my marriage, and get me mowing the lawn more often.

Mowing the lawn might help rejuvenate your marriage, too.

[JAK]

That's a very good point there Tater.
I tried the sustainability argument on her. It didn't fly.

[Keith Z]

I wonder if native americans ever got lyme disease... It was never named untill 1975, and symptoms wern't noticed untill 1883. So what happened before that?

[Appalachian Tater]

People suffered from all kinds of disease and died early deaths, especially those in the lower classes. The frequent skin symptoms are what were first noticed. Apparently European Lyme is different from the North American version.

[TOW]

that was a good read, thanx for posting that info..........

[saimyoji]

If you really care to learn about this bugger....read: Biography of a Germ.

[JAK]

http://www.quakerbooks.org/the_biogr...me_disease.php

That looks like a really good one thanks, and only $5.00

It states that many of the early Quakers contracted the disease. I also read somewhere recently that it may have been linked to the dimise of the passenger pigeon.

I know that woodland caribou went extinct in New Brunswick because of disease brought in with the increasing Whitetail deer population, which in turn was brought in my the massive clearing of forests through 19th century forestry. I've often wondered if the rise and fall and extinction of the passenger pigeon was related to 18th/19th century forest clearance.

[Appalachian Tater]

I've often wondered if the rise and fall and extinction of the passenger pigeon was related to 18th/19th century forest clearance.

I thought there were so many of them that they would literally darken the sky and then they were all just shot dead for sport and feathers for hats.

[JAK]

I thought there were so many of them that they would literally darken the sky and then they were all just shot dead for sport and feathers for hats.

I heard it was for food. They shipped them by the trainload to all the big cities. Yeah we ate them all. At their peak there were more passenger pigeons than all the other species of birds in America today, combined, over 5 billion, up to 1 billion in a single flight. Then suddenly, voom, no more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Pigeon
"Pigeons were shipped by the boxcar-load to the Eastern cities. In New York City, in 1805, a pair of pigeons sold for two cents. Slaves and servants in 18th and 19th century America often saw no other meat. By the 1850s, it was noticed that the numbers of birds seemed to be decreasing, but still the slaughter continued, accelerating to an even greater level as more railroads and telegraphs were developed after the American Civil War. Three million pigeons were shipped by a single market hunter in the year 1878."

[The Cheat]

In information just released by the NYC DOH, less than a third of those with tick-borne diseases even recalled having a tick and it is not necessary to have a tick bite to have tick-borne disease included in the possible diagnoses a physician investigates.

I'm not saying you shouldn't check for ticks, I'm just saying that if you do get tick-borne disease, much more likely than not you may never have even known you had a tick. Certainly you should not consider checking for ticks your primary method of prevention--use DEET or other recommended repellants.

Not to be wise, but if they knew they had a tick they would have removed it, and not gotten lyme disease. It's the ones you don't know about that get you.

If we are out in the woods, or working on the lawn, our strategy is to check for ticks after showering. And of course, permethrin on the clothes and picardin on the skin.

Everybody in my family has had lyme, at least once. No cases, and no ticks found, since we started using permethrin on our hiking clothes about 2 or 3 years ago.

[shelterbuilder]

I hope that this isn't considered to be off-topic too much, but I heard recently that Lyme in dogs can sometimes cause an aggressive behavioral shift in the animals. Once diagnosed and treatment is begun, the dogs seem to revert back to their former personality. Most of these dogs will test "high positive" for Lyme.

Nasty disease - for dogs or humans.

[mudhead]

Vaccine for mutt.

[rlharris]

Vaccine for mutt.

With care. Some breeds do not tolerate the vaccine. If you have a purebred, check with with your breed's parent club health committee for potential problems and precautions before heading for the vet's office.