Editor’s note: WRAL Local Tech Wire publishes selected stories from the news services of various universities as part of its UniversityTech coverage. LTW is enhancing significantly its coverage of scientific and research efforts at regional universities where many of tomorrow’s discoveries are being made and the foundations of new companies are in the process of being created.A North Carolina State University researcher has discovered that certain tick-borne bacteria may be responsible for some chronic and debilitating neurological illnesses in humans, particularly among people with substantial animal contact or arthropod exposure.
RALEIGH, N.C. — , professor of internal medicine at N.C. State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and adjunct professor of medicine at Duke University, studied the bacteria Bartonella to determine how long they induce active infection in humans. The most commonly known Bartonella-related illness is cat-scratch disease, caused by B. henselae, a strain of Bartonella that can be carried in a cat’s blood for months or years.
Cat-scratch disease was thought to be a self-limiting, or "one-time" infection. Breitschwerdt’s previous work, however, discovered cases of children and adults with chronic Bartonella infections from strains of the bacteria that are found in cats (B. henselae) and dogs (B. vinsonii subsp. berkhoffii).
In a study published in the September volume of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Breitschwerdt and colleagues from the Duke University Medical Center and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were able to detect one or more strains of Bartonella in blood samples from six patients suffering from a broad spectrum of neurological and neurocognitive abnormalities, including chronic migraines, seizures, memory loss, disorientation and weakness.
All of the patients in the study had both frequent tick exposure and significant animal exposure – some were veterinarians, others had grown up on farms or had occupations that kept them outdoors. All of them suffered from chronic, debilitating neurological problems.
The patients were treated with antibiotics, and three of them saw marked improvement. In the other cases, improvements were minimal or short-term.
Breitschwerdt believes that his research offers hope – perhaps the identification of a specific infectious cause of chronic neurological disease and another potential avenue of treatment – for what could be a significant segment of the population.
"Bartonella has been described by some scientists as a ‘stealth pathogen,’" he said. "Our research could lead to the elimination of what may be a silent and currently unrecognized epidemic among humans."
