New Lyme strains documented in Florida & new test

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New Lyme strains documented in Florida & new test

 

UNF professor works to unlock Lyme disease's mysteries.

 

Kerry Clark thinks he's developed a better test to diagnose the illness.

By Jeremy Cox

Story updated at 4:07 PM on Monday, May. 18, 2009

 

**Tick-borne Disease Research Area - Please Do Not Enter,** the sign says

on the front door of Kerry Clark's University of North Florida office. If

that*s not enough of a deterrence, there are always the photographs of

Florida*s three most common tick species blown up to larger-than- life

proportions.

 

But it*s worth poking inside the seemingly menacing door if only to meet

Clark and listen to his story.

 

**It*s like a great mystery,** Clark said.

 

 

The villain of his story is Lyme disease, a poorly understood illness

that*s spread by tick bites to tens of thousands of Americans each year. After

a decade of paltry funding and suffering countless tick bites himself, the

40-year-old epidemiology professor has reached a scientific breakthrough

that stands to revolutionize the way doctors diagnose and treat Lyme.

 

In addition, his toil has revealed an unsettling message for the people of

Florida and other parts of the South: Lyme-carrying ticks are spreading

the illness here at vastly higher rates than what public health statistics

and experts have suggested.

 

Disease*s spread

 

Lyme disease follows a perplexing arc that begins with a bull*s eye-shaped

rash and vague, flu-like symptoms. Without treatment, Lyme digs in deep,

progressing to potentially disabling effects, like severe arthritis,

fatigue, numbness in the hands or feet and neurological problems.

 

The vast majority of the more than 265,000 cases of Lyme disease reported

since 1993 have come from the Northeast and upper Midwest.

 

That*s a conservative number. Scientists think there are seven to 12 cases

for each one that is reported. And even that dire-sounding estimate may be

too low. Only about 40 percent of positive cases are getting detected by

traditional diagnostic tools, which test the body*s reaction to the Lyme

bacteria, Clark said.

 

Clark thinks that his test, which involves looking for Lyme*s DNA in the

victim*s blood, is a more accurate way of detecting the disease.

 

For many, an inaccurate test is a life-changer.

 

Caught early, the Lyme bacteria usually can be wiped out with antibiotics.

But many cases go undetected for years because people, though sick, often

don*t know they*ve been bitten by a tick or don't develop the tell-tale

rash.

 

Not safe in the South

 

People like Dane Boggs. For a decade, Boggs, a home builder, felt tired

all the time and his joints hurt. But his symptoms were mild, so he figured

they were merely the side effects of getting older.

 

Things got worse, though, after he was bitten by a tick on a job site in

Atlantic Beach five years ago. He now thinks that his previous decade of

troubles were caused by a tick bite that went unnoticed.

 

The double whammy of bites nearly crippled him, he said.

 

**My immune system was kind of fighting it off for 10 years, but when I

got bit [the second time], that's when I got super-sick,** Boggs said. **I

just wanted to go to bed all the time. It was like an 18-wheeler ran over my

body.**

 

The Ponte Vedra Beach man retired early to devote all his time to fighting

the illness. He took powerful antibiotics for two years with little

improvement. So he turned to an alternative therapy that uses electrical

frequencies to zap microscopic invaders like Lyme disease.

 

Today, the 55-year-old is healthy, though he cautions his results from the

alternative treatment probably aren't the norm. After his battle, Boggs

co-founded a research and support organization called the Northeast Florida

Lyme Association.

 

**Nobody even believes Lyme disease is in Florida. But it does exist, and

a lot of people are sick,** said Boggs, who has found a sympathetic ear and

a NEFLA board member in Kerry Clark.

 

Finding new strains

 

Clark's research has revealed that Lyme disease is much more common in

Florida than previously known.

 

State disease-surveillanc e efforts confirmed 88 cases last year, 11 of

which are believed to have originated in the state. But Clark has found the

Lyme bacteria in virtually every corner of the state, including hordes on

the First Coast.

 

The perception that the South doesn't have a Lyme problem has biological

roots.

In the Northeast, mice are the primary reservoir of the Lyme bacteria,

known among scientists as Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato. But in the South,

lizards are ticks' prime target. And since studies in California showed that

reptiles were poor reservoirs, many scientists concluded that the South

was relatively safe.

 

But Clark's studies of lizards in South Carolina and Florida revealed that

54 percent were positive for Lyme disease. That research petered out

because of a lack of funding - a frequent complaint of Clark's - but it led him

to perfect what he believes to be the most sensitive testing method yet for

the disease.

 

Lyme disease is hard to detect in lizards because their blood is highly

concentrated with their own DNA, overwhelming the genetic tidbits of any other

organisms that might be in their systems. By applying the same amplifying

methods he developed for lizard samples, Clark started getting positive

readings in human samples that had previously tested negative.

 

Clark put his theory to the test on 150 blood and skin samples collected

from patients suspected of having Lyme disease.

 

Forty-four percent came back positive, including 20 of the 49 samples from

Florida.

What's more, for the first time anywhere in the United States, he found

two additional strains of Lyme disease in humans: Borrelia andersonii and

another that has not yet been named.

 

At least five strains of Lyme are known to infect animals and ticks, but

researchers had never seen more than one in humans, Clark said. Most

diagnostic tests were only developed to detect one Lyme strain. So if more are

infecting humans, Clark thinks, that may explain why they have such a high

error rate.

 

A paper detailing his findings is in review with the Journal of Clinical

Microbiology.

 

Andrea Varela-Stokes, a parasitologist at Mississippi State University,

said she is intrigued by Clark's research. She called the understanding of

Lyme in the South a " tricky situation " because scientists have been unable to

grow the Lyme bacteria in laboratory cultures from sick patients.

 

Although Clark ran into the same problem, he thinks he*s had a

breakthrough.

**I think the paper is a really big deal,** he said. **One of two things

is going to happen: They*re going to say, *This is that weirdo who did all

that lizard stuff.* Or they*re going to say, *Why didn*t we do that?* **