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The United States has an epidemic brewing within our borders, and the problem is much more serious than most people realize. Lyme disease is spreading fast, and it only takes the bite of a poppy-seed-size tick to contract. Even after treatment, symptoms can be difficult to shake. Those infected can develop severe, rheumatoid arthritis-like joint and muscle pain. Fatigue and neurological disorders — such as numbness, tingling, weakness, and cognitive impairment — can set in too. Left untreated, infections can lead to brain inflammation or heart problems. At least a handful of such cases have proven fatal. A recent study...

In the '70s, a cluster of adults and children in Lyme, Old Lyme, and East Haddam, Connecticut, began to develop fevers, swollen joints, and, most mysterious, an angry rash, especially after playing or hiking near rivers. The cases were most prevalent in deer-heavy areas, and scientists quickly discovered a common link: black-legged ticks that jump from deer to humans. Lyme disease was first identified by a medical entomologist in 1982. Though recovery is usually speedy if you’re promptly treated with antibiotics, Lyme disease is a notoriously slippery condition to diagnose, especially outside the Midwest or Northeast, where it’s most common....

Ted SieferJune 16, 2014 Deer ticks, also known as blacklegged ticks, are the prime carriers of Lyme disease, which is particularly common in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Large numbers of ticks, the parasites that carry Lyme disease, are expected to emerge in New England in the coming weeks, experts said on Friday. Abundant snow over the winter and a wet spring have created ideal conditions for ticks to come out in the warm weather and try to latch onto hosts, they said. "The next three to four weeks is the peak season of risk," said Sam Telford, an infectious disease...

Vestal, NY (WBNG Binghamton) Standing just feet from a cement trail leading to Binghamton University's East Gym, biologist Ralph Garruto demonstrated how he has found ticks hiding in plain sight. "If you have a picnic table out over there, under a tree like that or just off to the edge, ticks are in this kind of leaf litter," Garruto said. Garruto has been studying tick behavior since the pests arrived in Broome County en masse six years ago. Through his research, he's found more ticks living around building and in man-made environments than in the deep woods. Recently, after testing...

Late summer is peak Lyme disease season. As a result, Sen. Charles Schumer has urged the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study new and potentially fatal tick-borne illnesses.The New York Democrat has urged the CDC to look into two diseases that have already been found in the state.Schumer noted that New York City and on Long Island lead the state in Lyme disease infections. play Schumer Calls For More Research Into Tick-Borne DiseasesWCBS 880's Monica Miller Reports In addition to Lyme disease, ticks are known to carry Babesiosis, Powassan virus and Borrelia miyamotoi.Schumer said those diseases are...

Anyone catch this show last night? It is definetely for a small market of viewers. Like me. I loved it. The content interests me. Of course, this coming from someone who's favorite TV program is Duck Dynasty. This show will never take off like Duck Dynasty, but I thought it was fairly entertaining. One reason I like it is because, as I was watching, I was thinking that the left is going to have a fit about these hunters are 'killing defensless deer". I say they are not killing defensless deer... they are killing delicious meat. Besides, the deer have...

Campaign Mailer: Romney Vows to Fight the 'Epidemic' of Lyme Disease in Virginia SEP 28, 2012 • BY JOHN MCCORMACK A WEEKLY STANDARD source living in Northern Virginia passes along photos of the first piece of mail the source has received from the Romney campaign. Instead of focusing on a big issue--say, Obamacare, the debt, or taxes--the mailer is about Lyme Disease: LYME DISEASE: A MASSIVE EPIDEMIC THREATENING VIRGINIA. ROMNEY AND RYAN WILL DO MORE TO FIGHT THE SPREAD OF LYME DISEASE. Here's the text for the rest of the mailer: It's a disease that begins from a small bug......

Two years ago, I started reading about vitamin D deficiency. In articles by Dr. Frank Lipkin and on Natural News, they explained the symptoms of vitamin D deficiency. Guess what? To my surprise and curiosity, a lot of the symptoms were like fibromyalgia. I went back through my paperwork and saw that the nurse had indeed told me to take vitamin D.

If you suffer from Morgellons disease, you have been waiting for a CDC study to be completed. The study was for the purpose of finding out what causes the heinous disease. The report says there is no reason for Morgellon symptoms, unless you want to blame it on patients' mental health. Once again, a disease is said to be a mental disease because there are no other answers for it.

A new tick-borne disease that may be stealthily infecting some Americans has been discovered by Yale researchers working with Russian scientists. The disease is caused by a spirochete bacterium called Borrelia miyamotoi, which is distantly related to Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochete that causes Lyme disease. B. miyamotoi has been found — albeit relatively rarely — in the same deer tick species that transmit Lyme, and the Yale researchers estimate that perhaps 3,000 Americans a year pick it up from tick bites, compared with about 25,000 who get Lyme disease. But there is no diagnostic test for it in this country,...

> Although the early symptoms of the illness are quite mild, if left untreated, it can result in serious damage to the skin, the joints, the heart and the nervous system, and effective therapy becomes very difficult. A team of researchers led by the veterinary bacteriologist Professor Reinhard Straubinger at Ludwig-Maximilians Universität (LMU) München has now shown, in an animal model, that application of a gel containing the antibiotic azithromycin to the site of the bite rapidly terminates the infection. The efficacy of this local antibiotic therapy for the treatment of borreliosis in humans is now being tested in a...

Joe Wilson of South Carolina -- the lawmaker who shouted "You Lie" at President Barack Obama during a speech -- remained hospitalized on Thursday with an "extended fever," his congressional office said. Wilson contracted Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness, after working in his yard. He is being treated at the Lexington Medical Center in West Columbia, South Carolina, said Eric Dell, Wilson's chief of staff.

U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina has gone to the hospital because of an extended fever. Wilson's office said in a short statement Wednesday that the Republican was admitted. He is best known for being rebuked by the House for shouting, "You lie!" at President Barack Obama in 2009. Wilson later apologized. The statement contained no other details, including when the congressman was admitted, if he remained in the hospital, or the name of the hospital. Wilson's office said last week that he was taking antibiotics to treat symptoms of Lyme disease. Previously a little-known lawmaker, after the remark,...

Researchers find molecules that might mark elusive syndrome. Some patients with Lyme disease still show symptoms long after their treatment has finished. Now proteins have been discovered that set these people apart from those who are easily cured. People who experience the symptoms of Lyme disease, which include fatigue, soreness and memory or concentration loss, after treatment for the disorder are sometimes diagnosed as having chronic Lyme disease or post-Lyme disease syndrome. But these diagnoses are difficult to make, because the individuals no longer seem to harbour the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. And the symptoms could instead be indicative...

The bacteria that cause Lyme disease, one of the most important emerging diseases in the United States, appear to hide out in the lymph nodes, triggering a significant immune response, but one that is not strong enough to rout the infection, report researchers at the University of California, Davis. Results from this groundbreaking study involving mice may explain why some people experience repeated infections of Lyme disease. The study appears online in the journal Public Library of Science Biology at: http://tinyurl.com/3vs8pm9. "Our findings suggest for the first time that Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that cause Lyme disease in people, dogs...

Paul Cellucci, the former Massachusetts governor and U.S. ambassador to Canada, announced today he has a relatively slowly progressing case of Lou Gehrig’s disease. "I’ve had symptoms for four years," the 62-year-old Cellucci said in a statement to The Associated Press. Despite some weakness, he said, "I am feeling quite well." Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, attacks the brain and spine and usually is detected after muscle weakness. It progresses to complete paralysis, is incurable and is always fatal. Each year the disease, nicknamed for the New York Yankees player who died of it, kills about 5,000 Americans.

Lynn Margulis.Javier Pedreira A dispute between the editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and an academy member has put the fate of three studies in question. In the wake of rows over a controversial paper published by the journal online in August — but not in print — two additional papers linked to the same academy member are now in limbo.Last month, PNAS editor-in-chief Randy Schekman wrote to academy member Lynn Margulis, a cell biologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, asking for "a satisfactory explanation for [her] apparent selective communication of reviews" for...

Casting aside one's comfort zone is always a little bit troubling; yet here I am, baring my soul for the world to see. My first book has been published and is now available. To be honest I do feel a sense of pride, but that pride is sometimes overwhelmed by fear – the fear of rejection, fear of the unknown and fear of discovery. Anonymity holds a power of sorts; allowing us the opportunity to voice our opinions while hiding behind invented monikers. That secrecy no longer protects me, as I've chosen to author my book under my real name....

DanburyNewsTimesArticle Last Updated: 05/12/2008 04:14:20 AM EDT Lyme disease care under fire Medical groups differ on courses of treatmentConnecticutBy Robert Miller Staff Writer In the battle over how best to treat Lyme disease, a new settlement between Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and a major medical group might seem to offer at least a little hope of expanded treatment for those with the tick-borne disease. That, however, would involve a change in the lines of debate over the disease, and it's not clear there will be any yielding. The settlement, reached this month between Blumenthal and the Infectious Diseases Society of...

In Warren Township, fearless deer stride across front lawns to nibble on grass and shrubs. They waltz up to front porches of million-dollar homes to sample the potted plants. Sometimes only repeated blasts of the car horn will clear the driveway. Along with these four-legged symbols of bucolic suburban life comes a dreaded illness: Lyme disease. In some cases, entire families are being diagnosed with tick-borne ailments, and residents are demanding that their towns and counties do something. In many towns, Lyme disease is becoming not just a medical issue but a potent political one. About 20 neighbors in a...