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This week we’d like to give a shout-out to two of our donors — the Montecalvos and Lovells — two families that have helped make Invisible International’s good works possible. Their sage advice and support have been essential in the progress we’ve made in alleviating the suffering associated with Lyme and other vector-borne diseases.
Looking to the future, we’re seeking funding for several of our highest priority initiatives. The first is the Tick Bytes Clinical Data Research Platform, a nationwide clinical data repository that will provide quality de-identified tick-borne illness patient data to researchers. This will accelerate the publication of better symptom profiles, diagnostics approaches, and treatment protocols. The second is the launch of a mental health platform, a suite of online tools to train support group facilitators nationwide on effective chronic disease management.
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Meet the Montecalvo Family
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Valerie and Frank Montecalvo are the founders and leaders of Bayshore Recycling in Woodbridge Township, NJ, considered to be one of the most progressive and vertically-integrated recycling facilities in the U.S. Their family of nine diversified companies specialize in solutions for proper, environmentally-sensitive recycling and solid waste management.
In just six months, the Montecalvo Foundation helped Invisible launch the first platform for tick-borne illness education. This website now offers 22 accredited continuing medical education courses to physicians and patients around the world, free of charge.
One reason the Montecalvo family decided to support Invisible International is because of our mutual commitment to fighting the collateral damage caused by climate change, specifically the rise in vector-borne illnesses such as Lyme disease.
Valerie Montecalvo, president and CEO of Bayshore Recycling says, “Climate change is a serious issue, and we all we need to pay attention to what we are doing to contribute to this calamity. Due to the rise of overall global temperature, there has been a proliferation of ticks and the diseases they carry afflicting so many and this seriously concerns us.”
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Meet the Lovell Family
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The Lovell family—Mark, Eileen, and their daughter, Emily—are champions of innovation in the fields of traumatic brain injury and tick-borne diseases. Dr. Mark Lovell is an internationally recognized concussion expert who developed the ImPACT test, the first scientifically validated approach to concussion evaluation. Eileen is an economist who has taught at the college level and has served for 16 years as an advocate for the local and regional National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) affiliates. Emily, who has a master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab and a PhD from UC Santa Cruz, is a researcher and educator working to broaden participation in computing.
The Lovell family has been the driving force behind Invisible’s 2020 Tick-borne Illness Education Hackathon, the 2021 Diagnostics Incubator, and Storytelling for Change, a team of experts working to educate the public on tick-borne diseases through mainstream media.
Eileen, a member of Invisible’s Advisory Board, says, “I’m hopeful that these efforts can lead to real and tangible improvement on the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme Disease.”
Emily, who spent 20 years lost in the medical system before being diagnosed with multiple tick-borne diseases, adds, “Invisible's current initiatives are striving to have real, tangible impact on tick-borne illness patients' lives - and I am so excited to see how they develop.”
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Deer are getting COVID. Will it be spread by ticks?
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An analysis of 97 white-tailed deer in Iowa at the onset of winter 2020 showed that 82.5% tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA, the cause of COVID-19 in humans. The geographic distribution of infection clusters suggests that cases rose because of human-to-deer exposure during the hunting season, as well as through deer-to-deer transmission.
“This is the first direct evidence of SARS-CoV-2 virus in any free-living species, and our findings have important implications for the ecology and long-term persistence of the virus,” said lead author Suresh Kuchipudi, clinical professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences, and associate director of the Animal Diagnostic Laboratory, Penn State. “These include spillover to other free-living or captive animals and potential spillback to human hosts. Of course, this highlights that many urgent steps are needed to monitor the spread of the virus in deer and prevent spillback to humans.”
For humans living in tick-endemic areas, this adds another worry to their list. White-tailed deer are hosts used by ticks seeking a final blood meal and looking for a mate, so it’s possible that ticks could ingest this unique virus and transmit it to other mammals, including humans. There are already 18 tick-borne viral and bacterial pathogens in the U.S. and 27 or more globally. This highlights the urgent need for ticks to be tested for SARS-CoV-2, to better understand this potential vector in the already complicated tick-borne disease ecosystem.
Read more
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Tick-triggered red meat allergy
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Have you been bitten by a tick? Do you get sick in the middle of night after eating red meat? Do you have unexplained anaphylactic reactions, hives, gastrointestinal issues, or arthritis? If you answered yes to more than one of these questions, you might have Alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a mammalian meat allergy.
Alpha-gal syndrome is associated with the bite of certain species of ticks. In the U.S., the primary instigator is the Lone Star Tick (Amblyomma americanum). While only a small percentage of the tick-bit develop the allergy, those who’ve been bitten multiple times are at higher risk.
This syndrome is technically a tick-bite-induced allergy to galactose-α-1,3-galactose. This sugar, commonly known as alpha-gal, is found in all mammals except for humans and some primates. Even if those with the allergy avoid red meat, some consumer products include hidden alpha-gal that can set off a reaction. These can include gelatin, medications, medical products (like heparin or vaccines), personal care products (like lotion or make-up), among others. Reactions, which can be life-threatening, may be immediate with injected drugs or delayed from 2 to 10 hours after the consumption of mammalian meat.
If you think you might have this allergy, a good place to get credible information is at alphagalinformation.org.
Learn more
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Experts discuss strategies for fighting those Lyme symptoms that won’t go away
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People with long-haul Lyme disease symptoms are often sidelined by the medical community. In a 2019 survey of 1,900 Lyme patients, 74% reported being treated disrespectfully by a healthcare provider, and 67% said that they postponed or avoided medical treatment due to discrimination, disrespect, or difficulty obtaining care.
Invisible International aims to fuel meaningful change for patients by accelerating the flow of new medical knowledge to treating physicians through the Bench-to-Bedside E-Colloquium, a monthly series of interactive discussions between world class researchers and boots-on-the-ground clinicians. The inaugural E-Colloquium tackles the controversial topic of “Borrelia persistence,” addressing the questions, “How does the Lyme bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, survive a recommended dose of antibiotics in the human body, and what treatment strategies can be used to eradicate the surviving organisms?”
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Epidemiology | 0.5 CME
In this course, Dr. Elizabeth L. Maloney, a Minnesota family physician and tick-borne disease educator, discusses the limitations of the CDC’s surveillance case definition of Lyme disease, 2017 updates to the definition, and the importance of basing a Lyme disease diagnosis on clinical symptoms, secondarily supported by test results.
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