IACFS Conf. report on Lyme and cfs link

[Guest guest]

Thanks to Cort who has posted this summary from the IACFS

Conference. I am not posting the stuff on genes and relevance to

infection which is also fascinating. The reason I did not include

this is because it raises questions as to why infected cells in cfs

patients DO NOT DIE. I continue to wonder if mycoplasma incognitus is

the cofactor in cfs and Lyme which make some people unable to clear

the borrelia. If you have infected white blood cells with mycoplasma

happily living inside them you would get a pretty screwed up immune

reaction to everything - a recipe for cfs disaster.

Let me add that Vojdani and Nicolson have been on the cutting edge of

mycoplasma research. It is great that Vojdani is working with an

antigen test for borrelia. IgeneX has such a test. It is a urine

antigen test. I wonder if Vojdani and Dr. at IgeneX have

compared notes?

Here is the link and part of the summary:

http://phoenix-cfs.org/IACFS%202007%20Conference%20III%20Immune,%

20Gut,%20Pain%20and%20Sleep.htm

LYME INFECTION RATES IN CFS PART I: Garth Nicolson – Chronic

bacterial co-infections in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Chronic

Fatigue Syndrome patients subsequently diagnosed with Lyme disease.

Dr. Nicolson was another impressive speaker. He has been involved in

elucidating pathogen prevalence in CFS for many years now. Some

researchers lost interest in pathogens when they failed to find the

pathogen that caused CFS. It's clear now that no one pathogen causes

CFS. We know that CFS patients are more susceptible to viral

reactivation and bacterial and viral infection than are healthy

people but we didn't really know how much more susceptible until now.

Dr. Nicolson apparently added up all the numbers and found that CFS

18x's more likely to harbor a pathogen than expected!

Dr. Nicolson also presented the first data on Lyme prevalence in CFS.

Dr. Nicolson noted that ticks carry a number of different diseases,

then indicated that he found that that 9% of Western U.S and a higher

percentage of Eastern U.S. CFS patients tested positive on a Western

Blot test for Borrelia burgdorfii antigens. These patients appeared

susceptible to multiple infections as about 2/3rds of them also

tested positive for a mycoplasma infection.

LYME INFECTION RATES IN CFS PART II: Aristo Vojdani, Bernard Raxlen.

In vivo induced antigen technology for detection of antibodies

against Borrelia burgdorferi and its cross-reactive antigens in

patients with Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia (poster)

As with some other pathogens associated with CFS the diagnostic

capability of the different Lyme tests has been in question. Here Dr.

Vodjani introduces a new test for Lyme disease called In Vivo-Induced

Antigen Technology (IVAT) that identifies antigens or immune reactive

proteins produced by Borrelia infections. An antigen is something

that provokes the immune system. Many pathogenic tests look not for

the pathogen itself but for indications that the immune system has

been activated by an infection. The test Dr. Vodjani is describing

appears to be looking for specific proteins that Borrelia produces.

Dr. Vodjani subjected 206 samples from CFS and Fibromyalgia patients

to two Lyme tests; the ELISA and Western Blot (WB) tests and the new

IVIAT multiple peptide-based ELISA (IVIAT-MPE) test. He found a much

higher rate of positivity – about 45% (92/206 samples) using WB than

Dr. Nicolson did. Hence the questions regarding the efficacy of these

tests! Were Dr. Vodjani's patients from a Lyme hotspot? Or are the

tests just unreliable? The IVIAT-MPE was positive in almost all of

these as well (88/92).

The IVIAT-MPE test was also positive in a high percentage (32/42) of

the WB tests with equivocal results AND it was positive in a good

number of the samples the WB test found were negative (26/44). All

told the IVIAT-MPE test was positive in almost 60% (146/206) of the

CFS/FM samples.

Does this mean that 60% of CFS patients have Lyme disease? Not

necessarily so. Dr. Vodjani indicates that the IVIAT-MPE

test " detects antibodies against unrelated peptides and proteins of

different infectious agents " . He further notes that because of this

physicians must make sure that other spirochetes such as Yersinia

entercolitica, Brucella, Chlamydiae pneumoninae, Ricketssia ricketsii

and even the glutathione-S-transferase protein need to be excluded

before a physician begins on a protocol of long term antibiotic

treatment to attack the Lyme pathogen. He suggests that this test

should be used in combination with the Western blot test.