Co-Infections and Lyme Disease

Some people seem to never fully recover from Lyme disease even after their initial infection is successfully treated.  Many people (and often doctors) don’t know it but it is often because they also have other untreated or undiagnosed illnesses, called “co-infections”.

Singer Daryl Hall of the rock group Hall & Oats had to cancel tour dates in 2005 because of unexplained fevers and tremors.  At his girlfriend’s advice, he got tested for Lyme and foundfour co-infections!  He went public with his story because he feels chronic Lyme disease needs to be acknowledged as a serious health issue.

“There are two very, very strong-feeling camps. One camp is really sure that if you’re bitten by a tick you get tests, medicine. But with the chronic disease, that won’t put a dent in it. It manifests in so many ways. It can lead to heart disease, depression. It can be so serious that people have died. It’s a battle,” said Hall.[1]

You would think that Lyme disease, itself, would be enough woes and misery.  Unfortunately, there are often other illnesses that came with a tick bite.  Ticks harbor more infections than just B. burgdorferi.  Sometimes, these co-infections are more common and more debilitating than B. burgdorferi.  (For example, one co-infection is Babesiosis, an infection similar to Malaria that infects the brain.)

A 2004 New Jersey study examined co-infections in Ixodes ticks that transmit Lyme disease and found the prevalence of B. burgdorferi infection was 33.6%.  However, the prevalence ofBartonella infection was 34.5%.  Thus, the co-infections of the Bartonella species were found, in that area, more often than the Lyme spirochete in these ticks.[2]

People often wonder why a co-infection didn’t show up on a test.  It is important to understand that negative tests for Lyme or co-infections are not always accurate.  There are many reasons for this.  In the case of Lyme, the infection could be in a form that is invisible to the immune system (L-form or cysts).  False negative tests can also occur if a particular bacterial strain was not tested.  It can happen if a weakened immune system is unable to form an antibody response to the infection.

Symptoms are a very important way to determine what co-infections are present.  Some co-infections are not obvious initially but, as treatment progresses, symptoms change and co-infections become more obvious.

Dr. Garth Nicolson is well known in the Lyme community for his study of chronic intracellular infections.  He identified a variety of infections present in common chronic conditions.  Some of the most common are:

Bartonella,

Babesia,

Ehrlichia,

Mycoplasma,

Chlamydia,

Anaplasma, and

Rocky mountain spotted fever.

We cover this in more detail in other articles - but we do want to emphasis that for best results, you must treat Babesisos for at least 5 months!  This is either with Monolaurin and Biofilm Dissolvers and/or with traditional drugs.  If your doctor says otherwise, they are repeating the ‘party line’ of a compromised medical panel.  We would get another opinion.

They must be treated for the full life of a red blood cell (4 months).  Otherwise the infection will recur.  Studies have shown that treatments lasting 5 months had less failures. Co-infections present their own set of challenges for physicians and patients.  Agents used to kill B. burgdorferi may not even touch the co-infections.

“Many an ‘incurable’ Lyme patient has discovered the existence of a second, lurking disease – ehlichiosis or anaplasmosis – only to be treated with doxycycline and, finally, get well,” author Pam Weintraub documented in Cure Unknown-Inside the Lyme Epidemic.[20]

There is hope and an answer!

1. R Forest, Daryl Hall speaks out on his battle with Lyme disease, Seacoast Media Group, June 12, 2008.

2. Adelson ME, Rao RV, Tilton RC, et al. Prevalence of Borrelia burgdorferi, Bartonella spp., Babesia microti, and Anaplasma phagocytophila in Ixodes scapularis ticks collected in Northern New Jersey. J Clin Microbiol 2004; 42:2799–801.