dcd2103 said...
True Garzie. Your post was very informative. Others recommended abx.
W/ respect to lyme and mosquitoes, I've never heard of a bullseye rash around a mosquito bite. Mosquito bites often happen in clusters and can last for weeks. I've had them swell and scar. The fact that mosquito bites often happen in clusters can make it relatively easy to distinguish from a solo tick bite, and the fact that the swelling and mark can last for weeks makes that bite easy to keep track of. Therefore, you'd think we'd eventually hear about EM rash surrounding mosquito bites, if this concept were true. Doesnt really seem to be a thing, though, although I'm sure you can find a few claims if you look hard enough.
I hear you and all other things being equal i too would think we would have documented case of bulls-eye rashes and overt Lyme associated with mosquito bites if it was a common occurrence.
but, I'm not sure we can rule it out based on observational phenomena like bull's eye rashes.
as a lot of the science is still not done or understood.
for instance, many studies report less than 25% of bites from Borrelia infected ticks to result in a bulls-eye rash.
also, many LLMD's report many bulls-eye rashes are non-typical in shape or color - eg different shapes or rahes with uniform redness are common and go unrecognized as lyme.
it could be the bull's eye phenomena is more to do with some component of the Ticks saliva reacting with our immune system than the Borrelia organism itself, and as such may not show up with other bites.
or
it could be that the bulls-eye pattern is in some way related to the organism transitioning from its dormant survival phase to its infective stage as it adapts to the host. and again would not occur in the rapid transmission model.
by the way, I read that the bacteria in a tick in its fasted state react to the blood entering the arthropods stomach and that it then undergoes epigenetic changes to adapt to the new host environment by sensing chemicals in the host blood while still in the tick. It is these epigenetic changes that take the 12-24hrs that are typically quoted for that mode of transmission.
this mechanism appears to be an evolutionary adaptation to allow the organism time to adapt to different hosts as its now known that (unusually for obligate parasites such as Lyme) it is able to infect a very wide variety of host species from reptiles and birds through small and large mammals and has no way of knowing what will come along next - due to its wait and see questing behavior.
in the other mode of transmission, the bacteria have not morphed into their dormant state and are still present in the mouthparts of the biting arthropods as active infective bacteria.
logically we could theorize that if the organism the arthropod last drew blood from was similar enough to a human then enough bacteria may be transmitted to the new host and survive to cause infection. But it's likely that there are other factors involved such as the time since the previous host was bitten, environmental conditions, and the state of the new host's immune system.
overall we can see that this is likely to be a less efficient method of transfer than the typical tick bite and long feed model so its logical to assume that it is far less common.
I think about
these things because my partner and I became ill with Lyme at the same time in 2014 ( this is unusual if caused by tick bites -especially as neither of us has any knowledge of being bitten by a tick or a bulls-eye type rash). I now have a positive IgM and IgG test for Lyme antibodies so Lyme seems 90%certain.
one thing that stuck in my mind - is that summer we were both bitten by around 10-12 horse flys.
the reason this stuck in my mind is it was so unusual to see and be bitten by so many.
i grew up in rural surroundings and we were familiar with horse flys - but always only saw 1 at any one time.
it would typically bite one of us as kids and fly off again or get swatted and that was that.
however, on this occasion, we were literally pursued for around 100yrads by what can only be called a swarm of around 30 of 40 of them. they were super aggressive and persistent and we each both bitten many times on exposed areas like wrists and calves before we could get away. they were so persistent that even iff swatted and you thought they were dead they would get back up off the ground and come back for more!
I know it sounds like a slightly hysterical account. but that is exactly how it happened. very very odd!
the bites all came up in raised red itchy welts with a large red area around them but nothing like a bulls-eye pattern.
odd things started happening with our health in the weeks and months that followed.
I now think this
could be the route we both managed to get infected at the same time.
or possibly that we both had lyme inside us prior to this but held in check by our immune systems and that something else from these bites ( bart, rickettsia or mycoplasma, babesia perhaps?)
infected us and damaged our immune systems causing Lyme symptoms to emerge - vert much like the slow onset that 50% of Horowitz patients experience.
a lot of theories i know but i share it as a possible example of how this type of transmission might look in practice and to add to the discussion