Envita’s Natural Issues Blog

Dino Prato, owner, founder, CEO, and administrator of Envita Medical Centers, and Dr. David Korn, D.D.S., D.O., M.D.(H), Chief Medical Officer of Envita, traveled to Kansas City, Missouri last week for a medical conference.  The title of the conference was “Lyme & Chronic Illness: New Tools to Promote Accurate Diagnosis and Treatment.”  The conference boasted a diverse faculty of practitioners, researchers, university professors, and diagnostic specialists, including: Carol Ann Ryser, M.D., Joseph Brewer, M.D., Stephen Fry, M.D., Reginald Dusing, M.D., and David Berg, M.S. Clinical Pathology. 

As we have discussed previously on this blog and on the Envita website, accurate testing for and diagnosis of Lyme disease continues to elude the majority of practitioners and researchers.  Inaccuracy plagues the standard tests utilized by most doctors.  Both the ELISA test and the Western Blot yield high false negatives.  Both tests are so sensitive that even if the patient is on Advil or Motrin, the tests can show false negatives.  In addition, these tests only test for a few strains of the Lyme bacteria; they do not include all significant antigens; and they utilize narrow criteria put forth by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that were meant to track epidemiological changes, and were never meant to constitute diagnostic criteria.  These standard tests focus on only a few “bands” identified by the CDC for purposes of surveillance, not diagnosis.  In fact, the ELISA test has been shown to miss as much as 35% of culture-proven Lyme.  As far as the Western Blot goes, several markers are eliminated from testing that are highly indicative of exposure to the Lyme bacteria.  As a result, Lyme-literate physicians have had to turn to more specialized testing and laboratories to obtain accurate Lyme diagnoses.  They have also had to rely on the clinical diagnosis, and the tell-tale signs, symptoms, history, exposure risk, and course of illness.  As knowledge of the disease progresses, so have evidence-based guidelines used to diagnose it, such as that put forth by the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS).

Lyme disease is a multi-system disturbance that often carries many co-infections that can interfere with its diagnosis.  The disease can also influence and exacerbate other chronic medical conditions.  The conference was held in an effort to help practitioners and researchers alike gain a better understanding of the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease in conjunction with chronic illnesses as a whole.

The diversity of the panel’s expertise was confirmation of a growing recognition in the Lyme community that we are dealing with a total body disease, affecting everything from the thyroid gland, to the adrenal glands, to hormones, to glucose levels.  As many as 20% of Lyme patients develop acute neurological disease, and 5-10% develop cardiovascular problems.  The panelists also confirmed that often times, when patients present with symptoms of chronic illness such as M.S., Lupus, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and many others, practitioners should be looking deeper, as such symptoms may actually be the manifestation of Lyme disease and its co-infections.  As discussed previously on this blog and on the Envita website, conditions such as Fibromyalgia, arthritis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, multiple sclerosis, ALS, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s, as well as some 350 different diseases, have symptoms similar to Lyme disease.  Known as “the great imitator,” the total number of symptoms associated with Lyme disease can total around 100.  Lyme disease was first identified in 1975 as the cause of an epidemic of arthritis occurring near Old Lyme, Connecticut.  Lyme disease is now known to be a complex multi-system disease that results from the immunologic response to infection with the tick-borne spirochete bacteria called Borrelia burgdorfei.

The links between Lyme disease and resulting chronic illness were discussed by the panel.  An emphasis was placed on the range of co-infections that are attendant to the disease.  These co-infections can range from bacterial, to viral, to protozoan.  Testing for and treatment of these co-infections must necessarily be as specialized and aggressive as that of the Borrelia bacteria itself.  Lyme and its various co-infections can result in widespread chronic inflammation, causing a recipe for breakdown in the body.  Also discussed was the role that fibrin can play in the progression of the disease.  The infections associated with Lyme disease can actually cause damage to blood vessel walls, leading to deposits of fibrin anywhere there is injury.  Deposits of fibrin can lead to a decrease in blood flow, resulting in less oxygen and fewer nutrients being circulated through the body.  This, in turn, can lead to the development of chronic degenerative disease.

The role of immunological markers was also explored.  Chronic Lyme infections are known to suppress the immune system, and the Lyme bacteria can affect all major cell types of the immune system, but it especially affects a subset of immune cells called CD-57.  The ability to measure counts of CD-57 cells is a relatively new breakthrough in Lyme treatment and is gaining popularity among Lyme-literate physicians.  Cell counts can be used to determine how active the infection is, how well the treatment is working, and even whether a relapse is likely to occur after treatment has ended.  CD-57 counts are even being used to validate that Chronic Lyme Disease is an active infection, contrary to what some in the medical community (and insurance companies) have argued.

Other cutting-edge discoveries were discussed, including the role of biofilm in the progression and resistance of Lyme Disease.  One of the panelists included Dr. Stephen E. Fry, M.D., a Lyme researcher for over 14 years and a leading pioneer in the area of biofilm.  Biofilm is best described as a “slime matrix” (think Ghost Busters) that coats the Lyme bacteria and its coinfections, making these pathogens very resistant to treatment, including antibiotics.  This sticky slime is made up of diverse single-celled microbes that adhere to one another and form complex community structures.  Once these pathogens colonize, the biofilm grows by cell division and recruitment.  The biofilm’s sticky protective coating weakens the patient’s immune system while shielding the Lyme pathogens, and can even facilitate communication among these micro-organisms through biochemical signals.  Biofilms even have the capability of developing “water channels” that distribute nutrients among the pathogens in the biofilm.  Latest treatment techniques are centered around finding ways to “strip” this biofilm so that antibiotics and other treatments can reach and destroy the pathogens. 

Dr. Korn also had an opportunity at the conference to share the success Envita has been having using a unique, integrative Lyme disease protocol and innovative biofilm-stripping techniques.

The fact remains that the medical community’s understanding of Lyme disease is still progressing.  As we are learning more and more about the disease and the manifold ways it can affect the body, its complexity is becoming even more apparent.  But the good news is that many in the medical community are starting to realize that their patients’ ability to return to health depends upon practitioners’ willingness to learn as much as possible and look beyond a collection of symptoms to the imitator hiding beneath.  This realization is no small matter considering that it is estimated that anywhere from 250,000 to 300,000 Americans contract the disease yearly.  This number is greater than the number of cases of AIDS, West Nile Virus, and the Avian Flu combined.  Lyme disease is the most common insect-borne disease in America and is one of the fastest growing infectious diseases in the country.       

Posted on April 3rd, 2009 under Lyme Disease • Tags: biofilm, lyme disease and chronic illness, lyme disease conference. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback