In a Paper Titled: "Identification of Novel Zoonotic Activity of Bartonella spp., France" to be published March 2016 in Emerging Infectious Disease Journal, the CDC reports they identified six strains of Bartonella in patients with chronic subjective symptoms and a history of tick bites. Three of the strains strains were B. henselae and 3 were from other animal-associated Bartonella spp. (B. doshiae, B. schoenbuchensis, and B. tribocorum).
Six Things You Need to Know About Bartonella:
1. "Certain Bartonella species are known to cause afebrile bacteremia in humans... Reports have indicated that animal-associated Bartonella species may cause paucisymptomatic bacteremia and endocarditis in humans."
2. Nonspecific Symptoms of Bartonella include: "arthralgia, muscle pain, fatigue, headaches, visual blurring, neurocognitive symptoms."
3. They noted, "chronic bacteremia caused by B. quintana causes few obvious symptoms apart from generalized fatigue and nonspecific leg pain."
4. "The main complaint of the case-patients was chronic fatigue, but they also reported other subjective or nonspecific symptoms (or both), such as headaches and myalgia."
5. In summary, their "major finding is the isolation of zoonotic Bartonella other than B. quintana in the blood of patients with poorly qualified syndromes. These results indicate that zoonotic Bartonella spp. infection may cause undifferentiated chronic illness in humans."
6. The Authors state it is crucial to determine whether Bartonella is involved "because treatment for chronic Bartonella bacteremia (as for B. quintana) is particularly arduous and may require 6 weeks of doxycycline treatment together with 3 weeks of gentamicin, as these are the only antimicrobial drugs known to be effective in eradication of Bartonella."
My take away from this study is, if you or someone you know had a tick bite, and tests negative for Lyme but continue to have chronic symptoms (like those I've highlighted above), a weird striated rash (like the one pictured below), swollen lymph nodes, or has been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue and/or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, it would be wise to be tested for a Bartonella infection.
*Note: Bartonella has been detected in louse, ticks, fleas, sand flies, mosquitos, wild animals and house pets. Although ticks have been suggested as a possible source of Bartonella infection in humans, in some cases, the actual source of infection remains unknown. While each of the patients in this study reported a tick bite within the previous 1-5 years, they each lived in the country and enough time had lapsed that another mode of transmission could have occurred.
Identification of Novel Zoonotic Activity of Bartonella spp., France.
Link: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/22/3/15-0269_article
For more information on Bartonella go to the CDC website or visit LymeDisease.org
Lonnie Marcum is a licensed Physical Therapist in the State of California. She has a family member with Lyme and Co-infections. You can follow her Blog at TenaciousPT.blogspot.com or on Twitter @LonnieRhea
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