Cases of Lyme disease, the tick-borne bacterial illness, are spiking; meanwhile, much about the disease is still mysterious to scientists and doctors. That’s why it’s great to hear that Johns Hopkins is launching the country’s first research center dedicated specifically to Lyme disease.
The Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Clinical Research Center is located at the Bayview Medical Center, and is funded in part by the Lyme Disease Research Foundation.
The center’s first project will be a study that looks at the long-term health and immune system response of people infected by Lyme, trying to determine why some patients recover after antibiotic treatment, while others continue to suffer symptoms for months or even years afterward.
Check yourself for ticks, reader!
I hope they are working with Pharmasan Labs in Wisconsin who have done extensive studies with Lyme disease.
I hope they can figure something out. I was diagnosed when I was 10 and am still having problems 20 years later.
It would be nice if the Australian Medical Association got on top of this. They clearly refuse to acknowledge the suffering of Australian Lyme Disease sufferers.
This is great. I have chronic Lyme and heck I’d love to be used as a study case.
I did multi-abxs just to keep bacteria at bay.
i’ve recently heard taht they now believe horse flies are able to pass on lyme disease after biting infected creatures and/or people…i wonder if this is true?
I have been suffering since 2009, and I would love to be part of this study!!I seem to be getting worse every year.
This new is so so exciting & long over due. I was bit in 2006 & had the bullseye rash. Not aware of lyme at all. The 1st day the bite became very painful so I immediately went to my primary doctor he mentioned to keep an eye on it make sure I don’t have any unusual symptoms but never once did be mentioned a tick or lyme. Four years started having all sorts of symptoms pain fatigue foggy brain the list goes on. I went to every doctor, every specialist I could think of, spent over $200,000 trying to figure out what was wrong with me. 2 years I was diagnosed with mercury poisoning & fibromyalgia. After treating those I still was just getting worse. During this time I was tested twice for lyme just to rule it out, negative results both times. Finally with my own research found a specialty lab called igenix. Of course they don’t take insurance. I completed the form had my blood drawn at the hospital and mailed the blood in along with $1,700. Low & behold test came back positive with 1 co-infection. However according to the cdc guidelines it was negative. Unbelievable! We seriously need to change those guidelines. I 1st hand know the symptoms of lyme because i have most of them, I had the bullseye rash & they still say I’m negative. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for starting up this research & really trying to get to the bottom of lyme. You research will hopefully save many of lives from what I have had to endure. You would think just living in constant pain, fatigue, memory loss, dizziness, chronic pink eye the list goes on & on would be enough but no! It took all my money, my retirement, my house, my 16 year job, my business just to find out that what stole my life was LYME DISEASE! I am very relieved to have a diagnosis but what now?! Not many options for treatment out there & what is isn’t covered by insurance. PLEASE don’t give up on finding a cure for this horrific life stealer!!
I wish I could feel good about this, because *any* attention that Lyme gets is better than none. But Johns Hopkins have been long-term Lyme denyers and haven’t been proponents of the ILADS research, just the deeply-flawed IDSA viewpoint. It’s just not as simple as taking 1 month of ABX and you’re done with Lyme forever – and the research is already out there as to why that is. One only needs to google Burgdorfer to pull up his research, which is still the best and most comprehensive, IMHO. And then there’s autoimmune/other toxins/inflammation/ coinfection responses, which is just now being addressed, even by Lyme doctors. So unless I see proof that Johns Hopkins is not just following more IDSA drive-based dogma and hypothesesl, I won’t celebrate what would seem to be this victory.
Just seen a comment about horse flies… I was diagnosed with Lyme after what I thought was a horse fly bite. My doc told me it must have been a tick. From my little research after there was an old medical article ouining the possibility in new England journal of medicine…..
Regardless I made a full recovery. I’m certain that it was a horse fly….