Category Archives: Research

CanLyme is dedicated to promoting advancements in Lyme disease research. More research is needed to accurately diagnose and treat Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses and CanLyme has taken measures to address this, see our Venture Grants Policy.

CanLyme board member Reuben Kaufman, PhD has an ambitious tick study project underway on Salt Spring Island, BC and his program is also able to feed ticks to another CanLyme board member Janet Sperling who is completing her doctorate on examining the various pathogens that are found in the guts of Canadian ticks.
The articles and abstracts below have primarily been sourced from: PubMed.gov or the individual journals in which they were published. Please click the PubMed or journal link to read the whole article on their site.

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Recent in: Research

Watch Mount Allison University Lyme Research Network announcement partnering with the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation

May 5th, 2017 One of the pillars within the mission statement of the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation is promoting research. We are pleased to announce our partnership with Mount Allison University in assisting their Lyme Disease Research Network with funding. Developing a broad capacity within Canadian universities to cope with what the government of Canada has admitted is a coming Continues →

Mount Allison University and Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation announce partnership in research.

Mount A researchers uniting expertise against Lyme disease May 5th, 2017 CumberlandNewsNow.com Fourteen researchers have come together to form the Lyme Research Network to provide a co-ordinated way to respond to the research needs of the Lyme community, to develop research that looks at the issue from new perspectives, and to share findings. The researchers represent a variety of disciplines Continues →

Ticks are carrying much more than just Lyme disease

“We’re finding pathogens that we didn’t know – well, we knew they were there, we just didn’t know how abundant they were. We find in some cases that people are getting sick from getting exposed to those, so we write those up in case studies and medical journals, for example,” Rich said. Access full article

Mothers of children with Lyme are targeted by Infectious Disease doctors… Research concludes: not one single accusation of child abuse is valid

[CanLyme Note:  This same unethical and sinister practice goes on across Canada with many Canadian mothers of children with Lyme disease having been accused by infectious disease doctors of abusing their children because they seek effective treatment for their children. Most investigations are triggered by the parent taking the child to one of our Children’s hospitals where they wrongly thought Continues →

Identification of Novel Zoonotic Activity of Bartonella spp

Emerg Infect Dis. 2016 Mar;22(3):457-62. doi: 10.3201/eid2203.150269 Abstract Certain Bartonella species are known to cause afebrile bacteremia in humans and other mammals, including B. quintana, the agent of trench fever, and B. henselae, the agent of cat scratch disease. Reports have indicated that animal-associated Bartonella species may cause paucisymptomatic bacteremia and endocarditis in humans. We identified potentially zoonotic strains from Continues →

Comparison of bacterial 16S rRNA variable regions for microbiomesurveys of ticks

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ttbdis.2017.02.002 Abstract   Ticks vector diverse pathogenic bacteria that are important to identify in public health and veterinary contexts. Technological advances in high throughput sequencing have given an unprecedented opportunity to comprehensively characterize bacterial associates of ticks, but recent studies have used different 16S rRNA variable regions and sequence read lengths with little consideration of whether they reveal the same Continues →

DON’T COUNT ON A RELAPSING FEVER TO DIAGNOSE BORRELIA MIYAMOTOI

You might assume a patient infected with Borrelia miyamotoi, a relapsing fever spirochete, to present with a relapsing fever. However, your assumption would be wrong 48 out of 50 times, according to a case series published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. [1] The authors found that only 2 out of 50 patients infected with the relapsing spirochete B. miyamotoi Continues →

Tick-borne Lyme disease exploding into Michigan; human cases up 5-fold

Feb. 23, 2017 Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press They’re already back. All it took was an unusual February warm spell this past week for the tiny insects causing an increasingly big problem in Michigan to become active once again, beginning their hunt for blood. “A student in the medical entomology lab just brought in six adult blacklegged ticks — three male and Continues →

Anti-science old guard taking last dying breaths of continuing to misinform physicians using tax payer dollars

Here is their opinion article title, amazing in 2017 how poorly they reference their evidence… “False and Misleading Information about Lyme Disease”   Here is one of their uniformed statements, “Persistent, unexplained subjective symptoms such as chronic fatigue and pain are common in the general population. Annual surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that approximately Continues →

Lyme sufferers devastated by federal government’s action plan

Richmond Hill Liberal, February 22, 2017 When Shari Allen first went public with her battle with Lyme disease, she was very sick, but she had hope. In 2015, the disease had upended her life, left her unable to work, her savings depleted, suffering from constant headaches and joint pain, but the Thornhill woman still believed this disease could be beaten. Two Continues →

Detection of Lyme Disease Bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, in Blacklegged Ticks Collected in the Grand River Valley, Ontario, Canada

Scott et al. Received: 2016.09.29; Accepted: 2016.12.28; Published: 2017.02.08 Abstract We document the presence of blacklegged ticks, Ixodes scapularis, in the Grand River valley, Centre Wellington, Ontario. Overall, 15 (36%) of 42 I. scapularis adults collected from 41 mammalian hosts (dogs, cats, humans) were positive for the Lyme disease bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (s.l.). Using real-time PCR testing and Continues →

Flunk the Lyme test? Just wait and get sicker

January, 2017, Huffington Post Sin Lee, a pathologist and scientist, believes the deck is stacked in the quest to air new ideas on Lyme disease. Too many science journals telling him to take his research elsewhere. Too many deftly worded rejections. Too little inclination to engage in a fair fight over the facts and fiction of Lyme disease. Dr. Lee’s Continues →

MicroRNA and mRNA Transcriptome Profiling in Primary Human Astrocytes Infected with Borrelia burgdorferi.

Abstract   Lyme disease is caused by infection with the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), which is transmitted to humans by deer ticks. The infection manifests usually as a rash and minor systemic symptoms; however, the bacteria can spread to other tissues, causing joint pain, carditis, and neurological symptoms. Lyme neuroborreliosis presents itself in several ways, such as Bell’s palsy, meningitis, Continues →

First report of a blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis Say (Acari: Ixodidae), parasitizing a raptor in Canada

Systematic & Applied Acarology 22(2): 208–216 (2017) http://doi.org/10.11158/saa.22.2.5 Abstract We document the first report of a blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis Say, parasitizing an American Kestrel, Falco sparverius Linnaeus (Falconiformes: Falconidae), in Canada. A fully engorged I. scapularis nymph was collected from the base of the tongue of an American Kestrel nestling recovered at Mirabel, Québec. This nestling had recently fledged Continues →

Antibiotic gel shows promise in preventing onset of Lyme borreliosis following tick bite

December 2016 Topical azithromycin for the prevention of Lyme borreliosis: a randomised, placebo-controlled, phase 3 efficacy trial   An antibiotic gel based on azithromycin, helps with prevention of Lyme disease following a tick bite. That is the finding of a multi-centre international study, in which MedUni Vienna’s Department of Clinical Pharmacology played an important part. The study is now been Continues →