Primary Care Medicine and the Challenges of Diagnosing Lyme Disease

By Bay Area Lyme

Bay-Area-Lyme-Foundation-Speaker-SeriesOn March 2nd, Bay Area Lyme again hosted another of its Speaker Series events. These popular salon-style events allow community members to come together in an intimate forum to share stories and hear directly from experts in the field.

The featured speakers this time were Dr. Christine Green, MD, a recognized leader in Lyme disease diagnosis and treatment and Allie Cashel, author of Suffering the Silence: Chronic Lyme Disease in an Age of Denial. Both shared personal and professional perspectives on the challenges of diagnosing Lyme disease. 

Can We “Hack” Our Way to Some New Solutions for Lyme?

By Bay Area Lyme

Reflections from a Promising Dialogue at the AAAS Conference in Washington, DC, November 17-18

by Lia Gaertner, BAL Science Committee

AAAS_Logo and magSome weeks ago, two members of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation Science Committee, Wendy Adams and Lia Gaertner, attended a leadership symposium in Washington, DC, sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and entitled, “Innovations-X: Rising Above the Politics for Progress in Science.”  The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society, with more than 125,000 individual and institutional members, and the publisher of Science magazine. Its mission is “to advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people.” At this event, there were three “wicked problems” discussed over two days: climate change, global/mobile health, and Lyme disease.  This blog, written by Lia Gaertner, will focus only on the Lyme portion of the conference.

Bay Area Lyme Foundation To Provide Tick and Lyme Disease Education in the Solano Resource Conservation District

By Bay Area Lyme Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:
Tara DiMilia, 908-947-0500, tara.dimilia@TMstrat.com

 

Bay Area Lyme Foundation To Provide Tick and Lyme Disease Education in the Solano Resource Conservation District

Program is open to the public and part of extensive education program throughout the Bay Area

Silicon Valley, California, October 26, 2015—The Bay Area Lyme Foundation, which aims to make Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure, will provide training about ticks and Lyme disease to naturalists, outdoor educators, program managers and the general public in the Solano Resource Conservation District, as well as other local agencies, to better educate area students, parents and classroom teachers. The program is part of an educational initiative started at Bay Area Lyme Foundation to inform California residents about prevention, the proper removal of ticks, and symptoms of tick-borne diseases.  It is based on new information that Lyme disease is endemic to the area.

Breaking the Silence: Finding a Voice to Change the Face of Lyme

By Bay Area Lyme

“We just have to speak up so that people can get better.” It’s a pretty straight forward line in the transcript of one of the stories in Allie Cashel’s new book Suffering the Silence: Chronic Lyme Disease in an Age of Denial (2015), but it’s also a call to action — a call inviting others to find their voices and share their stories to create the public momentum for change. Lyme disease is an epidemic that should be of concern to the general public and yet has too little awareness and far too few answers.

Investigating and Living with the Elusive Culprit of Lyme Disease

By Bay Area Lyme

Why is it that Lyme disease is so little understood, so hard to diagnose, and so frustratingly difficult to get treated? Such were the questions discussed last night at the first of the new Bay Area Lyme Foundation Speaker Series talks.

Field Mustard by Robert Buelteman
Field Mustard by Robert Buelteman

2014 Emerging Leader AwardJerome Bouquet recipient Jerome Bouquet, PhD, UCSF, began the program with a compelling overview of the history of Lyme disease and its pathology, highlighting some of the complicated attributes of the Lyme-causing spirochete and the manifestations of its infection. He touched on promising new technologies like the Tick Chip and the IBIS-developed Iridica, which use unbiased DNA amplification and multiplex assays with greater sensitivity (and more immediate results) than traditional methods. He also described promising developments in transcriptomics that have illustrated the lingering effects of the disease up to six months after treatment, and

Suffering the Silence and Finding a Voice

By Bay Area Lyme

Allie CashelBy Allie Cashel

The following is a guest post by a young author and Lyme patient who has turned her experience into a catalyst to help others find their voice and break the silence around long-term struggles with Lyme disease and other chronic illnesses. You can read more about Allie in our Faces of Lyme section and on her own website, sufferingthesilence.com.

Allie has a new book due out in early September, Suffering the Silence: Chronic Lyme Disease in an Age of Denial. Bay Area Lyme Foundation will be co-hosting a reading and book signing at Books Inc. in Mountainview, CA on Tuesday, September 15th at 7:00pm.  Come join us at the event and meet this engaging young speaker!

Everyone knew about Lyme disease in the town where I grew up. “Easy to diagnose and simple to treat,” people said. “As long as you get the medicine in you, you’ll be fine.” As a kid, I was always hearing stories about someone who had recently been diagnosed with Lyme – parents, cousins, siblings, pets – and in almost every case, the stories I heard were short.

LymeAid Brings Celebrities and Scientists Together To Accelerate Medical Breakthroughs for Lyme Disease

By Bay Area Lyme

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:
Tara DiMilia, 908-947-0500, tara.dimilia@TMstrat.com

Bay Area Lyme Foundation’s LymeAid Brings Celebrities and Scientists Together to Help Accelerate Medical Breakthroughs for Lyme Disease

David and Yolanda Foster, Daryl Hall, Huey Lewis, Jane Seymour, and Elet Hall were among supporters to help combat the fastest growing vector-borne infectious disease

PORTOLA VALLEY, CA — On Sunday, May 17, Bay Area Lyme Foundation, the leading national nonprofit funder of innovative Lyme disease research, hosted more than 400 celebrities, philanthropists, and noteworthy scientists at the third annual LymeAid® gala. The benefit dinner and concert raised approximately $600,000, of which 100% will go directly to fund research for Lyme disease.  More than 300,000 Americans are diagnosed with this potentially debilitating disease each year. 

Spreading the Word About Ticks in California

By Bay Area Lyme

Jo Ellis, Director of Education Outreach at Bay Area Lyme Foundation and Dan Salkeld, PhD, a foundation research scientist, lecturer at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and Professor at Colorado State University, recently attended the Association of Outdoor and Environmental Educators (AEOE) conference in Marin County, CA to update naturalists and outdoor educators on Lyme disease and tick-bite prevention.

IMG_9088_640Here, Bay Area Lyme research scientist Dan Salkeld shows California naturalists how to drag for ticks at the Association for Environmental and Outdoor Educators annual conference.

Sasquatch Racing Trail Series Partners with Bay Area Lyme Foundation

By Bay Area Lyme

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:
Tara DiMilia, 908-947-0500, tara.dimilia@TMstrat.com

Sasquatch Racing Trail Series Partners with Bay Area Lyme Foundation

San Francisco, CA – Leading Bay Area trail racing series, Sasquatch Racing, is proud to announce the Bay Area Lyme (BAL) Foundation as a presenting sponsor for their 2015 racing season. The Bay Area Lyme Foundation is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to making Lyme disease easy to diagnose and simple to cure.

#Lime4Lyme at Hops & Harmony

By Bay Area Lyme

Lime4Lyme

You couldn’t have missed it … Some months ago, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge captured the nation’s attention and raised millions of dollars for the ALS association. Participants were doused with a bucket of ice or could make a donation to the charity to avoid the ice dunking.

Well, in late August, one enterprising young woman, Ms. Shelby Anderson, inspired by the ALS tactics and determined to raise awareness about Lyme disease, introduced a new spin on the challenge. With friends and supporters at Western University in Pomona, CA, she challenged folks to eat an entire lime in support of Bay Area Lyme Foundation and our efforts to develop a better diagnostic.