WaPo on Gulf War Illness (TLR2-immunosuppression)
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: WaPo on Gulf War Illness (TLR2-immunosuppression)
Date: Jun 22, 2010 8:32 AM
WaPo ARTICLE BELOW
========================
Ah, yes. Now finally we find the culprit:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18778366
The LYMErix-like TLR2 agonizing,...:
"The failure of Leishmania, an intracellular pathogen, to stimulate a
pro-inflammatory response following entry into macrophages has been
well reported. This occurs in spite of the fact that ligands for the
toll-like receptors (TLR) have been recently shown on the parasite
surface and their role in disease protection well documented. The
outcome of infection in leishmaniasis is determined by the Th1 versus
Th2 nature of the effector response and the generation of IL-12 and
IL-10 by the infected macrophages is important for this decision. We
evaluated the effect of L. donovani infection of monocytes (cell line
THP-1, and monocytes derived from human peripheral blood) on Pam3cys
(TLR2 ligand) and lipopolysaccharide (TLR4 ligand) stimulated
production of IL-12p40 and IL-10. L. donovani infection caused
suppression of TLR2 and TLR4-stimulated IL-12p40, with an increase in
IL-10 production. Parasites also modulated the TLR2-stimulated mitogen-
activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway by suppressing MAPK P(38)
phosphorylation and activating extracellular regulated kinase (ERK)1/2
phosphorylation. These effects could be reversed either by using a
MAPK P(38) activator, anisomycin, or ERK1/2 inhibitor, U0126. ***L.
donovani caused modulation of TLR2-stimulated MAPK pathways in a
contact-dependent mechanism. In addition parasite structural integrity
but not viability was required for suppression of TLR2-stimulated
IL-12p40 and activation of IL-10. These observations suggest that L.
donovani has evolved survival strategies that subvert the pro-
inflammatory response generated through TLRs."***
Immunosuppressing, Great Imitator-causing,
"Immune-subverting,"...
"Not-Enough-Sexitis," and "Warrior
Fairyitis"
http://www.actionlyme.org/ROCKET_SCIENCE.htm
That's in the DSM, ya know; the "Mental
Illness" where "Warriors go through basic
training and take all kinds of abuse
to toughen them up, so they can go over
to the Middle East and fight the fake
oil wars,... so they can later imaginate
symptoms and pretend they're Marshmallow
Warriors for all the attention they get."
Oh, and let me not forget VooDoo:
http://www.actionlyme.org/070430.htm
It's about the Voodoo, in the end.
The soldiers are mad because they wanted to
be the Men Who Stare At Goats... never
realizing that by simply *WANTING* to be
the Goat-Starers, that that was all they
needed to psychogenerate the symptoms in
themselves.
- - - - -
Thanks and please nominate me to be the
next head of the NIMH cuz that guy Tom
Insel is about to have his super-great
http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=thomas+insel
Super-super-imaginator's head handed to him.
KMDickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
http://www.relapsinfever.org
=============================================
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/21/AR2010062104103_pf.html
Sand flies infect U.S. forces with parasite that leaves them with
'Baghdad Boil'
By Eric Athas
Tuesday, June 22, 2010; HE01
Mason Alsaleh was sound asleep when he was attacked at a U.S. Army
outpost in northwest Iraq.
What happened that August night last year left the 48-year-old
interpreter disfigured and unable to sleep, his mind muddled with
paranoia, his temper short.
But Alsaleh's injuries -- including what look today like third-degree
burns on his neck and arm -- weren't caused by gunfire or an
explosion. His enemy that night was a tiny insect that injected a
flesh-eating parasite into his skin.
Alsaleh, a Jordanian-born military contractor who works for Falls
Church-based Global Linguist Solutions, is a victim of leishmaniasis,
a disease carried by sand flies that is sometimes called Baghdad Boil.
He remembers that when he first got to his mattress in an old building
on a contingency base, it was covered in sand flies. He brushed them
away.
"It looked like a bug bite," Alsaleh said of the lesions he got on his
neck and elbow while the brigade he was working with was based
northwest of Mosul. "And it grew and grew and grew, and then started
to ooze. Then it gets bigger and starts to ooze again."
The disease, which the World Health Organization says affects 12
million people worldwide, received considerable media and political
attention in 2003 during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when hundreds of
soldiers began to spot red bumps on their skin that swelled for weeks
before rupturing into seeping wounds. The number of cases dropped to a
handful a month by last year, but as more U.S. troops make their way
into Afghanistan, doctors and military personnel are warning that the
number of cases could tick back up.
Although it's not commonly found in the United States, leishmaniasis
is considered endemic in 88 countries and is most prevalent in
Afghanistan, Brazil, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sudan, Bolivia, Peru,
Saudi Arabia and Syria.
When an infected sand fly bites a human, it injects the parasite under
the skin, explains Col. Glenn Wortmann, chief of the Infectious
Diseases Service at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Ironically, the
parasite stays alive by hiding inside the human body's center of
immunity: white blood cells.
"They multiply, they burst out of that macrophage [white blood cell],
infect other macrophages, and there's a progressive infection,
eventually causing an ulcer in the skin," said Wortmann.
But Alsaleh discovered that the treatment he began in March was almost
as traumatizing as the disease itself. The medication that is commonly
recommended by doctors is Pentostam, which is administered in 20-
injection doses and is "associated with a tremendous number of side
effects," said Wortmann.
Most patients who use Pentostam are plagued for months by an
aggravated pancreas and liver, as well as severe muscle and joint
pains, said Wortmann. It isn't approved by the Food and Drug
Administration: U.S. military patients can get the drug only at Walter
Reed, and civilians such as Alsaleh must obtain it through the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.
Other methods used to get rid of Baghdad Boil include a pill called
fluconazole, sold under the name Diflucan, which Wortmann said is
normally used for fungal infections. For leishmaniasis, it's taken
once a day for six weeks, but it's not nearly as effective as
Pentostam, said Wortmann.
In September 2003, one of the highest months of leishmaniasis
infection among U.S. troops in the past seven years, the Defense
Department issued a memorandum asking health-care personnel to
"increase their level of suspicion for this disease among redeploying
personnel from Afghanistan, Iraq and other areas where leishmaniasis
is endemic and sandflies are prevalent."
Soldiers were required to apply a DEET-based product to their bodies
and to treat their uniforms with a repellent called permethrin. Col.
Peter J. Weina, the director of the Leishmania Diagnostics Laboratory
at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, said
those rules, along with having more soldiers sleeping in buildings
rather than in tents, have reduced the number of infections.
He also said that military medical personnel initially were much more
vigorous in searching out, diagnosing and reporting cases than they
are now, because in 2003 they didn't know which strain of leishmania
parasites they were battling. Since then, they've learned that the
vast majority of the parasites in Iraq are leishmania major, a type
that isn't as dangerous as strains found in other regions of the
world.
"The numbers are going down," said Weina. "But how complicated the
cases are and the potential devastation that can come out of the
disease is higher now than it was even when a larger number of cases
were coming out of Iraq."
A neglected disease
Leishmaniasis is more common in Afghanistan than in Iraq, according to
the World Health Organization, which lists it as one of the most
neglected tropical diseases in the world. And the infected sand flies
there are armed with leishmania major parasites more menacing than
their counterparts in Iraq, as well as leishmania tropica, a more
persistent and hostile species that causes bigger boils.
Leishmaniasis has many faces.
Both leishmania major and leishmania tropica cause the cutaneous form
of the disease, which can produce lingering boils such as the ones
that popped up all over Mason Alsaleh's body. Sometimes this form of
the disease will result in much smaller lesions that vanish over time.
The visceral strain, most commonly caused by leishmania donovani,
leishmania infantum and leishmania chagasi, strikes its victims'
liver, spleen and bone marrow, and is deadly if untreated. Symptoms
vary, but visceral leishmaniasis can cause "persistent fever for weeks
on end, 20 to 30 pounds of weight loss, big liver, big spleen," said
Wortmann. If it's diagnosed early enough, there is a simple, FDA-
approved drug for this type of leishmaniasis called AmBisome.
And the most terrifying form -- mucocutaneous, caused by leishmania
braziliensis -- gnaws away at the faces of the infected.
Cutaneous leishmaniasis starts out looking like a mosquito bite; a
month or two after the initial sand fly bite, it breaks open into a
volcano-like lesion. And Wortmann said, although it's a rarity, he has
seen cases where it took almost a year before the parasite began its
siege.
About 10 months after he was bitten, Mason Alsaleh is still struggling
with the impact of this disease. His lesions are no longer oozing. But
the interpreter, who has returned to his home in Acworth, Ga., said he
continues to suffer from insomnia, chest pain and shortness of breath;
his doctors tell him these symptoms are possibly side effects of the
medications he has taken. His condition has kept him from returning to
work since he was evacuated from Iraq in January.
He's eager to go back, though he is concerned about what leishmaniasis
-- or Pentostam -- might have done to his mind. (Malaise is listed as
a common side effect of the drug.)
"I'm paranoid about it, I'm worried about it, I don't feel the same
way I was when I was in Iraq," said Alsaleh, who had never heard of
the disease before getting his diagnosis from an Iraqi doctor. "And I
have a short temper; anything gets on your nerves. For the longest
time, I didn't know what was going on. It does affect you mentally and
it does affect you psychologically. . . . It is affecting our
soldiers; it's affecting everyone who is going overseas to Afghanistan
and Iraq right now."
At the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, David Sacks is
working with researchers to prevent leishmaniasis before it strikes.
"There are currently no vaccines against leishmaniasis; that's the
bottom line, but there's a lot of research," said Sacks, chief of the
NIH's Intracellular Parasite Biology Section. He said the Infectious
Disease Research Institute in Seattle has a potential vaccine in the
first phase of clinical trials.
Victor Linscomb, of Tulsa, Okla., has seen many times just how savage
this parasite can be.
The 59-year-old aircraft mechanic, who is the director of the
nonprofit 1-2-3 International, travels to Nicaragua about every three
months to deliver medical services and supplies. In the past five
years, Linscomb estimates he has seen at least 500 cases of
leishmaniasis.
He said the disease is so complicated to treat that there's very
little his group can do for victims; the closest health clinic takes
two days to get to.
He can't shake 22-year-old Santos Flores from his mind.
"Her cutaneous is now becoming mucocutaneous, and her nose is becoming
infected and the cartilage will continue to disintegrate until it
caves in," he said.
In the northern Nicaraguan jungle where Flores lives, Linscomb said,
the locals have their own diagnosis. They believe her mother was
cursed by a shaman. The leishmaniasis, they say, was caused by that
curse.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci