So I had all the symptoms of lyme disease, and noticed the bulls-eye rash on the back of my knee. I went to a doctor and got a blood test taken for lyme. I got antibiotics for lyme. the next day I had an especially bad fever, so the next morning my parents brought me to a lyme specialist, who said he was sure I must have lyme based on what I was describing as symptoms, and looking at my rash.

I got the blood tests back today and they were negative! I know that the tests can be wrong, but is it possible that there is some other disease that could be giving me the bulls eye rash and lyme symptoms? thanks.

No. Lyme is the only thing that causes a bull's eye rash. Here's a good article that talks about the unreliability of Lab tests for Lyme. canlyme.com/labtests.html. It's a little technical. but I think you'll get the gist of it. do your doctor a favor and give him a copy of it. In medicine, you never stop learning. So keep taking those antibiotics and make sure you finish them.

There are a 2 or 3 different types of tests for lyme. maybe you should have a different kind. Hope you didn't stop your antibiotics, just in case the test was wrong.

Posted on 06. Mar, 2011 by admin in Treatments

Question of the Year: Are neurological (MS-like) symptoms caused by lyme and co-infections, or something else? is there really such a thing as MS (Multiple Sclerosis), or is MS simply a convenient way to categorize a class of symptoms, similar to Fibromyalgia?

Even my Lyme Doc (LLMD) is getting on the MS-drug bandwagon these days. why deny yourself the benefit of meds that aren’t necessarily immune suppressants, he says? he wants me to treat lyme and MS at the same time.

The only drug I would consider within the MS library of medications is Copaxone. this drug has a relatively long history of use, is reportedly immune modulating rather than immune suppressing (other common MS drugs suppress the immune system), is made up of synthetic amino acid-like components, and there are no documented reports that it escalates existing infections.

HOWEVER, and this is a BIG however, there are no clinical trials proving that it doesn’t worsen existing infections like lyme, just a comment on the manufacturer’s website that they don’t think that it does. AND, my symptoms don’t quite fit those the typical MS patient, nor do my lab tests. Yep, some of the tests definitely say POSITIVE for MS, but then the symptom patterns and other tests don’t point to the regular garden-variety MS, but rather some beast of unknown origin that eats spinal cords for lunch.

So, do I take the plunge and become yet another human guinea pig (and pin cushion) for this stuff, regardless of the risks?

Copaxone is designed to help control symptoms, not as a cure for anything. So, it could be a lifetime of daily injections into the 7 so-called fatty areas of my body in hopes of simply slowing down the progression of symptoms… not that I even have much fat anymore, after losing so much weight over the last year.

Lots of questions to ask the MS-doc this week, and I’m sure most will not bring solid answers. after all, the MS-docs are fully bought-in to the daily injections of immune modulators and/or suppressants, it’s part of their standard protocol. And, of course, they don’t recognize lyme as an entity other than ordering the obligatory tests as part of the screening of a new patient. They have no clue as to what to do if a patient actually tests POSITIVE for lyme, or for any other active infection either, for that matter.

Lots of things can create MS-like symptoms, including lyme, XMRV and HTLV-1, to name a few. Not that any of these have solid treatment protocols either though, so all of this is just another crap-shoot.

<…sigh…>

No good answers here, only questions… Hoping I’m not going down the path of falling for the latest Snake Oil cure.

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Newswise — a team of heart experts at Johns Hopkins has found that dual lab tests of blood clotting factors accurately predict the patients whose blood vessels, in particular veins implanted to restore blood flow to the heart during coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), are more likely to fail or become clogged within six months. One test gauges the speed of blood platelet clumping and the other measures the level of a clumping chemical byproduct.

Researchers say the danger from such treatment failures following CABG is that the heart can return to its original state of having an insufficient blood supply. Chest pain and other symptoms may return, upping patients’ chances of requiring further surgery to bypass the newly clogged arteries or angioplasty to widen them.

Reporting in the March 1 edition of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the Johns Hopkins team found that a commercially available test of how fast blood-clotting platelets actually clump together, called PFA-100, reliably predicted vein graft failure in 229 people from the mid-Atlantic region who had had CABG performed within the previous six months at any one of four different hospitals. those who ranked in the quarter with the slowest blood-clotting times had an 11 percent vein graft failure rate, while those whose blood clotted fastest had a 28 percent risk.

Tests of another highly reactive chemical whose action is normally suppressed by aspirin, urinary 11-dehydro-thromboxane B2 (UTXB), were equally linked to vein graft failure. the quarter of study participants with the lowest amounts of UTXB had a 12 percent likelihood of one or more veins occluding, while in the quarter with the highest amounts of UTXB, the rate was 29 percent.

When results of both tests were combined, patients with the “most-sticky” platelets and highest UTXB levels had a nearly sevenfold increased risk of vein graft failure, compared to those who had the “least-sticky” platelets and lowest UTXB levels.

“Now we have a particularly useful series of tests to help physicians identify patients at high risk who really need closer follow-up to check for potentially clogged grafts,” says study senior investigator and interventional cardiologist Jeffrey Rade, M.D.

The team’s ultimate goal, however, he says, is to use these tests to help develop replacement or add-on treatments to daily doses of blood-thinning aspirin, the current mainstay for warding off clot formation and subsequent vein graft failure.

According to Rade, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart and Vascular Institute, these two tests offer physicians new tools for early detection of bypass patients at greatest risk of vein graft failure, giving them advance warning and, potentially, buying time to try drug or surgical therapies that might either slow down or reverse the narrowing and buildup of plaque and dead cells inside the grafted vein.

He says previously known risk factors were the size of the vein to be bypassed, with veins smaller than 1.5 millimeters having twice the failure rate of larger veins, and, similarly, vein grafts with slower blood flow having a two to three times greater likelihood of failing.

In CABG, blood vessels from other, readily accessible parts of the body, usually the chest wall or leg, are removed and re-attached to the heart to restore open blood flow, rerouting blood to avoid arteries blocked by underlying coronary artery disease.

Some 448,000 CABG procedures were performed in the United States in 2006, the last full year for which estimates are available. Nearly all patients took daily doses of the blood-thinning drug aspirin to prevent subsequent blood clots.

And the chances of vein graft failure need to be taken seriously. the researchers say that despite such treatment, one-third of study participants had completely occluded or blocked veins within six months of their bypass surgery.

“These numbers are extremely valuable and show us that we have to continue to work to make an already effective surgery even better,” says study co-investigator and cardiac surgeon John Conte, M.D.

Moreover, Conte notes, 19 percent of all vein grafts were completely occluded in study participants after six months, though the vast majority had no symptoms of heart failure, such as chest pain and shortness of breath, to indicate that something was wrong.

“Eventually,” says Conte, a professor at Johns Hopkins, where he is also director of the heart and lung transplantation programs at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, “pre-bypass tests may determine that some at-risk patients are better having only arterial grafts instead of vein grafts, or drug therapy without surgery, or more aggressive angioplasty instead of more bypass surgery.”

Conte says the team’s next steps are to perform both tests before patients undergo bypass surgery and to assess whether subsequent treatment helps people live longer. Plans are also under way to examine any factors that might boost or lower UTXB levels, and lower a patient’s vulnerability.

The Hopkins scientists pursued the study because aspirin is widely used and known to cut in half any risk of vein graft failure after CABG, and they wanted to assess what role, if any, aspirin resistance might play. To their surprise, aspirin resistance was quite rare, in less than 1 percent of study participants six months after surgery. so, they decided to investigate other aspects of platelet function, including thromboxane production, to see if there was any other chemical connection to vein graft failure. in all, the latest study tested nearly a dozen chemical factors involved in platelet function.

As part of the so-called Reduction in Graft Occlusion (RIGOR) study, each participant had their blood tested before and immediately after bypass surgery. some 368, mostly men, were enrolled in the study, which took place from 2003 to 2006. Blood testing was repeated in those who survived past six months. Study participants, whose ages ranged between 34 and 88, also had an advanced CT scan, using a 64-CT multi-row detector scanner that can produce clear images of the tiniest blood vessels, letting researchers measure the extent of any blockages.

Funding support for the study was provided by the Johns Hopkins General Clinical Research Center; the National Institutes of Health Institute for Clinical Translational Research; Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership, of Bridgewater, N.J., the manufacturer and distributor of Plavix, a clot-busting drug; and by AstraZeneca, of Wilmington, Del., the manufacturer of Brilinta, another anti-clotting medication. Additional study support came from Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, of Deerborn, Ill., which provided the PFA-100 testing kits used in the study, and from GlaxoSmithKline, of Research Triangle Park, N.C., the maker of enteric-coated aspirin.

Besides Rade and Conte, other Hopkins researchers involved in the study were Tyler Gluckman, M.D.; Jodi Segal, M.D., M.P.H.; Steven Schulman, M.D.; Edward Shapiro, M.D.; and Thomas Kickler, M.D.

The four hospitals that participated in the study were the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md.; Christiana Hospital in Christiana, Del.; Peninsula Regional Medical Center, in Salisbury, Md.; and Walter Reed Army Hospital, in Washington, D.C.

For additional information, please go to: hopkinsmedicine.org/heart_vascular_institute/experts/physician_profile.html?profile=7209DC1919066DA26A70A68B2D14CCE7&directory=1B2D0F30B59D39A341B0C23CB2B204D9hopkinsmedicine.org/heart_vascular_institute/experts/physician_profile/4AF79101560836D76926CC787A359F96/John_Conte,%20MDcontent.onlinejacc.org/cgi/content/abstract/57/9/1069

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Rabies suspectedly claimed two lives in Bali on Sunday, with one victim said to have been bitten by a dog as late as two years ago.

The two victims, I Wayan Laut from Klungkung and I Putu Dewen from Bangli, died at RSUP Sanglah hospital, Denpasar. Both were taken there in critical conditions.

The clinical symptoms show that they have been infected with the rabies virus, Ken Wirashandi, the Rabies Problem Tackling secretary in RSUP Sanglah, said Monday as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.

Ken said that the family of I Wayan Laut informed that the latter was bitten by a dog three months ago but was not given any vaccine at that time. Laut began showing clinical rabies symptoms, such as seizures, four days before his death, he said.

Dewen was said to have been bitten by a dog two years ago. a day later the dog died. Dewen too was not treated with vaccine.

Head of the Bali Husbandry Agency Putu Sumantra said that the agency promptly deployed monitoring teams in the field following the incident to prepare for dog vaccinations.

However, he said that he was still waiting for lab tests of the victims blood and saliva samples to confirm rabies was the cause of death.

Sumantra waved off the notion that the incidents served as proof that vaccination programs had failed.

DEAR DR. DONOHUE: I am a 75-year-old woman with stage 3 kidney failure. How many stages are there? what symptoms occur in higher stages? what can I do to slow the progression?

DEAR T.S.: Chronic kidney disease has five stages. Staging is based on measuring how well or how poorly the kidneys filter blood to cleanse it of waste materials.

Since high blood pressure is both a cause and a consequence of kidney malfunction, close monitoring of blood pressure is one way to slow the decline of kidney function. Sometimes, patients’ kidney downturn stabilizes, and that could be what’s happening to you.

Your doctor will tell you — based on lab tests, which are more reliable than symptoms — if you need a special diet.

DEAR DR. DONOHUE: I have heard that diabetes definitely can affect a person’s personality. will you explain and elaborate on this concept?

DEAR M.K.: I’m not so sure I can, and I’m not so sure I agree with it. I know many, many people who have diabetes and whose personality hasn’t changed one iota after being diagnosed with it.

Chronic illnesses can affect the way people look at life and react to life’s problems and joys. I can’t, however, describe any particular personality changes that happen to people with diabetes. Where did you get this information? will you let me know?

Write to Dr. Donohue at P.O. Box 536475, Orlando, FL 32853-6475

where i type in my symptoms and get answers?

WebMD
Check Your Symptoms – need information as you determine what to do about your symptoms? get help figuring them out by answering a series of questions.

More places to check are:
myelectronicmd.com – has A – Z symptoms help
mayoclinic.com – also can help with symptoms
labtestsonline.org – provides information regarding lab tests doctor ordered

All three above have helped me a number of times!