I have the utmost respect for the microbes who cause tick-borne illnesses, and the vectors/hosts who aid and abet them. Their ability to evade, undermine, and co-opt the human immune system is nothing short of incredible.
Gee, I hope you and yours are free of a first-hand acquaintance with these beings, @ndlessjoie mugyuljoie.
I’ve played host to two tick-borne bacterial species that have been positively identified, but spirochetes are so difficult to pin down that I still really wonder about B. burgdorferi, especially after reading the latest news in these articles. A couple of my friends have received definitive diagnoses of Lyme. It took 30+ years for one of them to find a doctor (who happened to personally have Lyme disease themself) who knew how to test for and treat it. She remembered exactly when and in which geographical location she got bitten. Another friend was told for years that it was all in her head, and was prescribed psychiatric drugs for depression and strange crawling sensations in her noggin — only to eventually get a positive diagnosis of Lyme. Meanwhile the neurological damage was being done. It’s egregious. The attic of her house on the edge of the woods was home to field mice — in these parts, the white-footed mouse is one of the vectors along with deer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-footed_mouse#Connection_to_Lyme_Disease
Oh, goody goody — some of the little critters are suspected of carrying hantaviruses — whose name comes from the Hantan River that flows through Gangwon and Gyeonggi provinces. The Hantan [also transliterated as Hantaan] is a tributary of the Imjin and Han rivers. Had to toss in that sageuk reference. 😉
I don’t hate the beasties. I just wish that we could peacefully coexist without their harming me. It may well be that I lost the genetic crap shoot with a single nucleotide polymorphism or two that puts me at an immunological disadvantage. I grew up in whitetail deer country, and have been scratched numerous times by cats and bunnies since I was a kid. I got a mosquito bite in Hawaii that resulted in a nasty staph infection that still gives me twinges more than 35 years later. I had mononucleosis in college, so Epstein-Barr virus is another factor that muddies the waters.
Some years ago I read that microbiologists were targeting Lyme co-infections with bacteriophage viruses, which sounded like a great idea to me. The Pasteur lab in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia was doing interesting research on the subject, and when I last checked years ago, had been working with researchers in the US. Evergreen State U. in Oregon was collaborating, IIRC. It was really exciting.
Evergreen State College is here in WA. They just had their yearly bacteriophage meeting and the female lead scientist who began the work at Evergreen is still participating even after her retirement.
I’m not a biting insect fan and ticks are tied with mosquitos on my list of least liked local insects. I understand your stories all too well.
Well knock me over with a feather. Thanks for the pointer to the ongoing bacteriophage research at Evergreen. I think I stumbled across it when reading about resetting the gut microbiome with fecal transplants of microbes from donors with robust flora.
Oops — wrong state, but at least I had the correct general part of the Left Coast. I didn’t know you’re in that neck of the woods. 😉
I’m not a fan of skeeters either. In Warren County, there used to be a malarial swamp that was drained in the late 19th-early 20th century. It was basically a eutrophied lake bed formed by the Wisconsin glacier’s terminal moraine. Shades of Death Road is still on the map. It’s surprising to consider such pestilence this far north, but that was the case in colonial times. It’s not like we’re in the Panama Canal Zone with its steaming jungles and endemic yellow fever.
Alas, the Asian tiger mosquito with its flashy zebra-stripe legs has been here in NJ since 1995. They are aggressive little boogers. I was amazed at their ferocity during the daytime when I encountered them in Hawaii. One of them chomped my ankle when I was working the overnight shift at the radio station that led to the staph fiasco. At least back then S. aureus had not yet evolved. Or maybe it just wasn’t on anyone’s radar yet.
Read this yesterday- it’s an excellent article (though still a little rankled over the term Lyme Loonies). A few of us have been unfortunate enough to contract Lymes, as this bucolic countryside is knee deep in ticks. My small solution is to get a dozen Guinea hen chicks every spring. I let them roam the property; they eat their weight in ticks!
I’m a big fan of guinea fowl for exactly that reason. One of my farmer buddies up in Nova Scotia had a flock of them patrolling the premises. From what I’ve read, they’re smarter than chickens and keep an eye out for hawks. Alas, I’m stuck in a condo, so have never had the opportunity to commune with the critters. I would have loved to keep a couple of them for eggs. Do you collect and eat the guinea eggs? How large are they?
It really stinks that Lyme disease patients who advocate for themselves are termed “Lyme Loonies” because of the politics surrounding the infection. No one would dare do that to patients afflicted with cancer or heart disease, would they? Or would they?
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PakalanaPikake
August 15, 2019 at 10:55 AM
Ticked Off
Lyme Disease Is Baffling, Even to Experts
by Meghan O’Rourke, September 2019 Issue
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/life-with-lyme/594736/
See tick bite article (MORE)
PakalanaPikake
August 15, 2019 at 11:08 AM
(MORE)
What Tick Saliva Does to the Human Body
Ticks use their saliva to create a “lake of blood” inside their hosts.
by Sarah Zhang, Jul 25, 2019
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/the-marvels-of-tick-saliva/594652
I have the utmost respect for the microbes who cause tick-borne illnesses, and the vectors/hosts who aid and abet them. Their ability to evade, undermine, and co-opt the human immune system is nothing short of incredible.
mugyuljoie is preciousss
August 15, 2019 at 6:00 PM
I hate them with a burning passion.
PakalanaPikake
August 15, 2019 at 11:53 PM
Gee, I hope you and yours are free of a first-hand acquaintance with these beings, @ndlessjoie mugyuljoie.
I’ve played host to two tick-borne bacterial species that have been positively identified, but spirochetes are so difficult to pin down that I still really wonder about B. burgdorferi, especially after reading the latest news in these articles. A couple of my friends have received definitive diagnoses of Lyme. It took 30+ years for one of them to find a doctor (who happened to personally have Lyme disease themself) who knew how to test for and treat it. She remembered exactly when and in which geographical location she got bitten. Another friend was told for years that it was all in her head, and was prescribed psychiatric drugs for depression and strange crawling sensations in her noggin — only to eventually get a positive diagnosis of Lyme. Meanwhile the neurological damage was being done. It’s egregious. The attic of her house on the edge of the woods was home to field mice — in these parts, the white-footed mouse is one of the vectors along with deer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-footed_mouse#Connection_to_Lyme_Disease
Oh, goody goody — some of the little critters are suspected of carrying hantaviruses — whose name comes from the Hantan River that flows through Gangwon and Gyeonggi provinces. The Hantan [also transliterated as Hantaan] is a tributary of the Imjin and Han rivers. Had to toss in that sageuk reference. 😉
I don’t hate the beasties. I just wish that we could peacefully coexist without their harming me. It may well be that I lost the genetic crap shoot with a single nucleotide polymorphism or two that puts me at an immunological disadvantage. I grew up in whitetail deer country, and have been scratched numerous times by cats and bunnies since I was a kid. I got a mosquito bite in Hawaii that resulted in a nasty staph infection that still gives me twinges more than 35 years later. I had mononucleosis in college, so Epstein-Barr virus is another factor that muddies the waters.
Some years ago I read that microbiologists were targeting Lyme co-infections with bacteriophage viruses, which sounded like a great idea to me. The Pasteur lab in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia was doing interesting research on the subject, and when I last checked years ago, had been working with researchers in the US. Evergreen State U. in Oregon was collaborating, IIRC. It was really exciting.
mugyuljoie is preciousss
August 16, 2019 at 4:39 AM
Evergreen State College is here in WA. They just had their yearly bacteriophage meeting and the female lead scientist who began the work at Evergreen is still participating even after her retirement.
I’m not a biting insect fan and ticks are tied with mosquitos on my list of least liked local insects. I understand your stories all too well.
PakalanaPikake
August 16, 2019 at 7:03 AM
@ndlessjoie,
Well knock me over with a feather. Thanks for the pointer to the ongoing bacteriophage research at Evergreen. I think I stumbled across it when reading about resetting the gut microbiome with fecal transplants of microbes from donors with robust flora.
Oops — wrong state, but at least I had the correct general part of the Left Coast. I didn’t know you’re in that neck of the woods. 😉
I’m not a fan of skeeters either. In Warren County, there used to be a malarial swamp that was drained in the late 19th-early 20th century. It was basically a eutrophied lake bed formed by the Wisconsin glacier’s terminal moraine. Shades of Death Road is still on the map. It’s surprising to consider such pestilence this far north, but that was the case in colonial times. It’s not like we’re in the Panama Canal Zone with its steaming jungles and endemic yellow fever.
Alas, the Asian tiger mosquito with its flashy zebra-stripe legs has been here in NJ since 1995. They are aggressive little boogers. I was amazed at their ferocity during the daytime when I encountered them in Hawaii. One of them chomped my ankle when I was working the overnight shift at the radio station that led to the staph fiasco. At least back then S. aureus had not yet evolved. Or maybe it just wasn’t on anyone’s radar yet.
PakalanaPikake
August 15, 2019 at 11:19 AM
The Great Willy Burgdorfer, 1925–2014
By Lucy Bauer, Monday, February 2, 2015
https://irp.nih.gov/blog/post/2015/02/the-great-willy-burgdorfer-1925-2014
beantown
August 16, 2019 at 11:07 AM
Read this yesterday- it’s an excellent article (though still a little rankled over the term Lyme Loonies). A few of us have been unfortunate enough to contract Lymes, as this bucolic countryside is knee deep in ticks. My small solution is to get a dozen Guinea hen chicks every spring. I let them roam the property; they eat their weight in ticks!
PakalanaPikake
August 16, 2019 at 12:58 PM
@beantown,
Glad you found it interesting.
I’m a big fan of guinea fowl for exactly that reason. One of my farmer buddies up in Nova Scotia had a flock of them patrolling the premises. From what I’ve read, they’re smarter than chickens and keep an eye out for hawks. Alas, I’m stuck in a condo, so have never had the opportunity to commune with the critters. I would have loved to keep a couple of them for eggs. Do you collect and eat the guinea eggs? How large are they?
It really stinks that Lyme disease patients who advocate for themselves are termed “Lyme Loonies” because of the politics surrounding the infection. No one would dare do that to patients afflicted with cancer or heart disease, would they? Or would they?