Health
Calgary family shares dire tale to raise awareness of Lyme disease
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May is National Lyme Disease Awareness Month.
Until three years ago, it wasn’t something to which Jordan Bentz or her mother, Julie, ever gave much thought.
But in September 2020, Jordan, then 10 years old, developed a strange bulls-eye-shaped rash on her leg, after a summer of playing outside and taking camping trips.
“It was just like, oh, you know, I have a rash. It’s not really a big deal,” Jordan said.
Jordan’s mother took her to a walk-in clinic in Calgary.
“I Googled it, and a bulls-eye rash came up, which is the hallmark of Lyme disease. I didn’t know a lot about Lyme, but I knew that wasn’t good. And so we took her to a walk-in clinic,” Julie said.
“Because we didn’t see a tick, (they) said oh, there’s no way that she could have Lyme (disease).”
The doctor prescribed Benadryl and the pair headed home.
Within days, Jordan developed a persistent cough, and over the next few months, her symptoms worsened dramatically.
“She was just becoming increasingly ill. By February 2022, she completely lost her ability to walk. She was in incredible pain. In her feet, burning pain. We would take her to emergency. We couldn’t get any answers,” Julie said.
“Then, by March 2022, she started having seizure-like episodes that turned into hundreds a day. She lost her memory. She was completely wheelchair-bound. It was devastating.”
The Bentz family went from doctor to doctor hoping to find someone to identify the cause of Jordan’s decline and offer treatment, but the physicians they saw in Calgary couldn’t agree on the cause or a course of action.
Eventually, they started looking outside the country.
Tests run in labs in both Germany and the United States of America showed the presence of the bacteria causing Lyme disease, as well as other tick-borne bacteria in Jordan’s system.
The treatments that followed those tests have cost the family more than $150,000.
Lyme disease is caused by the Borrelia bacteria.
Four strains cause the disease.
Two of them, Borrelia burgdorferi and Borrelia mayonii, are the primary vectors in North America.
The bacteria is carried from host animals, often birds or small rodents, to humans through black-legged ticks.
Borrelia bacteria (green) escaping a blood vessel (red) and infecting a body.
In his lab at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine, George Chaconas researches the Borrelia bacteria.
“I call it a stranger from another planet,” Chaconas said.
“Not literally, but it is very different.
“It changes its coat and constantly puts on new disguises as time goes by so that your immune system is unable to clear it because a new set of variants has popped up. By the time you get antibodies and clear those, yet another set of variants has appeared.”
Chaconas says current tests for Lyme disease are imperfect at the onset of the disease as they look for antibodies, not the actual bacteria.
“And it can take many weeks before you develop a positive response because it requires your system to build up antibodies against the infecting organism,” he said.
In his lab at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine, George Chaconas researched the Borrelia bacteria.
CanLyme, The Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation, says there is no universally accepted test for detecting Lyme Disease.
It also maintains that Canadian testing for the disease is fraught with problems, writing on its website, “Overall, Lyme tests in Canada are largely flawed. Other labs recommended by CanLyme are all certified and accredited, run by PhDs who simply refuse to follow flawed testing protocol … Canada has no mechanism for better testing due to bureaucratic controls that are influenced by for-profit players, and not victims and their experts.”
On its website, CanLyme recommends two testing facilities, Armin Labs in Germany and Ingenex Inc. in California.
Chaconas also says the way the bacteria causes immune reactions can lead to a long-term autoimmune disease known as Post-Treatment Lyme Disease, often referred to as chronic Lyme disease.
“About seven per cent of people who are diagnosed and treated can end up with long-term persistent symptoms,” Chaconas said.
“At this point, those are believed to come from an immunological response, rather than a continuing infection.”
Jordan’s condition is improving.
She is no longer bedridden and now can get herself around with the use of crutches.
She is hopeful that one day she will return to playing competitive softball.
Her mom wants people to pay attention to Lyme disease, not just through May, but the whole year, and says Calgarians need to be aware that just because the disease is not endemic to Alberta does not mean it cannot be contracted here.
“(What) I would want people to hear is don’t underestimate the possibility of contracting Lyme in Alberta, in Calgary, in your own backyard,” Julie said.
“And if you feel like something’s wrong, keep fighting. Keep looking for answers. If you don’t agree with the diagnosis, keep looking.”
Julie Bentz and her family went from doctor to doctor hoping to find someone to identify the cause of Jordan’s decline and offer treatment.
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Grande Prairie RCMP issued a warning Friday after it was revealed fentanyl linked to a deadly overdose was mixed with a chemical that doesn’t respond to naloxone treatment.
The drugs were initially seized on Feb. 28 after a fatal overdose, and this week, Health Canada reported back to Mounties that the fentanyl had been mixed with Bromazolam, which is a benzodiazepine.
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Mounties say this is the first recorded instance of Bromazolam in Alberta. The drug has previously been linked to nine fatal overdoses in New Brunswick in 2022.
The pills seized in Alberta were oval-shaped and stamped with “20” and “SS,” though Mounties say it can come in other forms.
Naloxone treatment, given in many cases of opioid toxicity, is not effective in reversing the effects of Bromazalam, Mounties said, and therefore, any fentanyl mixed with the benzodiazepine “would see a reduced effectiveness of naloxone, requiring the use of additional doses and may still result in a fatality.”
From January to November of last year, there were 1,706 opioid-related deaths in Alberta, and 57 linked to benzodiazepine, up from 1,375 and 43, respectively, in 2022.
Mounties say officers responded to about 1,100 opioid-related calls for service, last year with a third of those proving fatal. RCMP officers also used naloxone 67 times while in the field, a jump of nearly a third over the previous year.
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Health
CFIA continues surveillance for HPAI in cattle, while sticking with original name for disease – RealAgriculture
The Canada Food Inspection Agency will continue to refer to highly pathogenic avian influenza in cattle as HPAI in cattle, and not refer to it as bovine influenza A virus (BIAV), as suggested by the American Association of Bovine Practitioners earlier this month.
Dr. Martin Appelt, senior director for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, in the interview below, says at this time Canada will stick with “HPAI in cattle” when referencing the disease that’s been confirmed in dairy cattle in multiple states in the U.S.
The CFIA’s naming policy is consistent with the agency’s U.S. counterparts’, as the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has also said it will continue referring to it as HPAI or H5N1.
Appelt explains how the CFIA is learning from the U.S. experience to-date, and how it is working with veterinarians across Canada to stay vigilant for signs of the disease in dairy and beef cattle.
As of April 19, there has not been a confirmed case of HPAI in cattle in Canada. Appelt says it’s too soon to say if an eventual positive case will significantly restrict animal movement, as is the case with positive poultry cases.
This is a major concern for the cattle industry, as beef cattle especially move north and south across the U.S. border by the thousands. Appelt says that CFIA will address an infection in each species differently in conjunction with how the disease is spread and the threat to neighbouring farms or livestock.
Currently, provincial dairy organizations have advised producers to postpone any non-essential tours of dairy barns, as a precaution, in addition to other biosecurity measures to reduce the risk of cattle contracting HPAI.
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Health
Toronto reports 2 more measles cases. Use our tool to check the spread in Canada – Toronto Star
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Canada has seen a concerning rise in measles cases in the first months of 2024.
By the third week of March, the country had already recorded more than three times the number of cases as all of last year. Canada had just 12 cases of measles in 2023, up from three in 2022.
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