The February Lyme Disease support group meeting is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 27 from 6:30-8 p.m. at the Hillsboro Public Library meeting room, 819 High Ave.
The support group meeting is held for the benefit of people curious about tick borne diseases. We are continually reviewing and discussing new information about the diseases and of possible ways of dealing with them.
Amy Maxmen has an article from nature.com, August, 2011, about tick borne disease sufferers whose treatment should have cured them, but are still afflicted with symptoms.
“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. ... Armin Alaedini at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York and his colleagues have found that patients diagnosed with post-Lyme disease syndrome have antibodies that suggest they carried the infection for an unusually long time. ... (they) looked at antibodies made in response to a protein called VlsE, which is found on the surface of Borrelia burgdorferi, the tick-borne bacterium that causes Lyme disease. ... This finding suggests that patients with chronic symptoms have experienced a prolonged infection, caused by microbes that have evaded the immune system by varying the epitopes they carry. As a result of these variations, the body makes new antibodies targeting the modified protein. The longer the microbe manages to keep changing, the more diverse its host’s antibodies become.”
Conversations at the meeting review the kinds of things noted in Maxmen’s article. Thus it is our goal to grow in our understanding of how to deal with the tick borne bacterias or microbes which have invaded and affected our bodies. We welcome you to join our discussion or just to listen in and glean from what you hear.
Questions about our meeting or its purpose may be emailed to garycepek@yahoo.com, or telephone 608-489-2725 (ask for Gary), or mail to this address: Gary Cepek, S1468 Cepek Rd., Elroy, WI 53929
