For scientists and clinicians alike, one of the Holy Grails for successfully treating and curing Lyme disease is developing tests that identify the disease sooner, show when people are cured of infection, and can diagnose reinfection. Now, researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine say they have identified just such a testing mechanism.
As people weary of being cooped up during a pandemic winter look forward to a summer outside, residents across the northeastern United States are once again confronted with a familiar virulent pathogen lurking in the woods and fields. Unlike coronavirus, however, this dangerous microorganism doesn’t float through the air it enters the body through the bite of a tick.
Lyme disease has been a constant scourge since it was identified five decades ago on the Connecticut coastline, before spreading across the New England and Mid-Atlantic states. Caused by the bacterium
Borrelia burgdorferi (and its cousin
Borrelia mayonii), the disease has long baffled scientists with its strangely stealthy manifestations.
Author Grace Talusan gives voice to the Filipino immigrant experience in the US Writer Grace Talusan. Photo: Alonso Nichols
Marybelle is a Filipino domestic helper who lives with Lincoln Chow, a Chinese-American professor, and Jing, a Hong Kong-born homemaker who yearns for a child she is not able to have. Marybelle earns money not only from the Chows, but also from weekends spent cleaning the rooms of local students. Her hard-earned dollars transform into large remittances home to her mother and daughter in Manila. In turn, her mother mails Marybelle photos of the sprawling family s newborn babies and of relatives at funerals - a token connection to family milestones that happen while she toils, several continents and oceans away.
People You’ll Hear in This Episode
Tufts Now.
Michael Reed, professor of biology, studies avian ecology and conservation biology. He looks at how habitat loss and fragmentation affect extinction risk and population viability, as well as the role of animal behavior in extinction risk and conservation. To get a feel for why species regeneration is so urgent, read about the UN report on species extinction rates, the report on species population size decline, and the 3 billion North American birds that have vanished since 1970.
Erica Smithwick, J95, majored in geology and environmental studies at Tufts. She is now a professor of geography at Penn State, where she is director of the Ecology Institute. A landscape and ecosystem ecologist, she is involved in understanding how a wide range of disturbances, especially fire, affect ecosystem function.