Mosquitoes & Lyme Disease

Are Ticks The Only Culprit? Dr. Sponaugle Believes Mosquitos Are Also To Blame For Lyme Disease

Do Mosquitoes Carry Lyme Disease?

Lyme disease is often associated with ticks, specifically deer ticks. Yet, some researchers have started to suggest that mosquitoes might also be vectors of this disease, stirring controversy within the Lyme disease academic sphere.

Despite evidence that mosquitoes carry Borrelia in their gut and potentially can transmit the infection to humans, many prominent disease centers, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), still argue otherwise.

Unlike in ticks, Borrelia's survival in mosquitoes is less well-equipped. Even though Borrelia has been found in mosquito guts and saliva, questions arise regarding its survival capacity without supportive proteins found in ticks.

Furthermore, mosquitoes feed rapidly, often within minutes, a far cry from the days-long feeding of ticks, thereby limiting the spirochetes' ability to adapt for transmission.

However, recent studies, including one performed by researchers from Goethe-University, Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Gorlitz, and the University of Frankfurt, suggest that mosquitoes might indeed have the necessary equipment to facilitate Borrelia's survival and transmission.

"I have never met a chronic Lyme patient who denied being bitten by a mosquito, yet, I have treated thousands who denied ever seeing a tick." - Dr. Sponaugle

However, the focus remains too much on “tick-borne” when there should be more American research on mosquito-borne diseases. Dr. Sponaugle suggested in 2009, when he took over his daughter’s medical care for Lyme disease, Bartonella, Ehrlichia, West Nile, Babesia, etc., that mosquitoes carry Lyme disease. This scientific fact was finally proven in Germany, and the study was released by the University of Frankfurt in 2015.

German universities' mosquito study: pioneering findings

Are Women More Prone To Mosquito Bites?

Many men bring their chronic Lyme wives to Sponaugle Wellness and, upon questioning, suggest that their wife is their mosquito repellent.

Do mosquitoes prefer “sugar” to “spice”? The old nursery rhyme suggests females are true, sweeter than men, is it actually true?

If so, and if mosquitoes are a major reservoir for Lyme spirochetes, it might explain why we treat so many women with severe Lyme disease who have never seen a tick.

To make this debate more interesting, I must mention a University of Florida study that suggests mosquitoes are more attracted to the sweet smell of lactic acid. Thus, patients with higher toxicity levels will attract more mosquitoes, and it is a known fact that females generally suffer far more gut toxicity than men.

Furthermore, females have twice the prevalence of toxin-derived Multiple Sclerosis (MS) than men.

The more toxicity one suffers, the more inflammation one suffers, and subsequently, excessive inflammation stimulates an elevation of multiple blood clotting factors (Fibrinogen, Thrombin-Antithrombin III, PAT).

The elevated clotting factors ultimately narrow the capillary lumen and prevent red blood cells from traveling through the microcirculation, thus compromising oxygen delivery. This leaves deep tissue in a state of micro-hypoxia or lack of oxygen, thus leaving body tissue in a slight but chronic anaerobic state. This mild anaerobic state causes excessive production and accumulation of sweet-smelling lactic acid in the body tissue and bloodstream.

The take-home message is – the more toxic, the more inflamed, the more excessive blood clotting, the more reduction of capillary blood flow, the more lactic acidosis build-up, the “sweeter” you smell to mosquitoes. This will explain the mechanism for some of you who know well that you are the “mosquito magnet” among your friends and family.

​Suppose we accept the stellar research from the University of Frankfurt and acknowledge that mosquitoes bite many more people than ticks.

Should we then not surmise that partial causation of the surge of Lyme disease is secondary to the ever-growing scourge of mosquitos?

​I believe these scientific facts and common sense should compel well-funded institutions to immediately begin an attempt to study and ascertain what percentage of mosquitoes are indeed carrying Lyme spirochetes.

Women Who Consider Themselves “Mosquito Magnets” Are Most Susceptible

Let us always think and pontificate, let us not become complacent, assuming we have the answer in totality. We must realize the more we know, the less we know.

We cannot blindly accept the limited thinking of many; we should indeed be focused on studying the possibility that mosquitoes are potentially every bit responsible for causing an increased prevalence of Lyme disease in Americans.

We should also surmise that there is a great possibility, certainly remain open-minded, that mosquitoes can more easily transport Bartonella, a much smaller bacterium than the Borrelia spirochete.

At Sponaugle Wellness, our clinic is saturated with Bartonella-ridden females, who have never seen a tick but consider themselves a mosquito magnet. Their blood smears are saturated with various Protozoa, which readily correlate with Protozoa infection on PET brain scans.

These women who suggest “mosquitoes love them” more commonly test positive for Bartonella, which seems to be ubiquitous. The blood smears of these women typically reveal Bartonella infection, which correlates with medial frontal lobe pressure, mid-forehead, and often significant pressure behind their eyes. These female patients who readily attract mosquitoes exhibit a specific pattern of under activity in the medial frontal lobe on their PET brain imaging.

​This “Bart pattern” we see on their PET brain scan and the excessive pressure these patients experience in the middle of their forehead and behind their eyes typically goes away once we enhance their mitochondrial function, enhance natural killer cell activity via all-natural IV protocols, which then, after the enhancement of their immune function we provide an efficacious kill with specific antibiotics that are much better for killing Bartonella than they are for Lyme spirochetes.

Let’s keep learning together as I encourage you, the patients, to increase awareness and put pressure on politicians to allocate more tax dollars for the study of mosquitos as a potential and significant reservoir of not only Lyme spirochetes but also what my patients are proving is a Bartonella epidemic in America.

Mosquito Study from German Universities

The German study aimed to understand whether Borreliae could be found in different mosquito species and whether Borreliae could be detected in mosquitoes post-metamorphosis.

The researchers found Borreliae in ten mosquito species across four genera, consistent with previous studies. They also detected a significant amount of Borreliae in the mosquitoes' salivary glands, indicating potential for transmission.

Moreover, the study provided unprecedented data regarding the second goal, discovering that Borreliae can survive the metamorphosis from larvae to pupae and from pupae to mosquito.

This finding suggests that Borreliae has developed survival strategies within mosquitoes, potentially quieting doubts about the mosquitoes' capacity to transmit infectious Borrelia to humans.

The researchers in this study aimed to check two things.

First, whether Borreliae can be found in different species, or even different genera, of mosquitoes despite their different feeding habits, and secondly, whether Borreliae can be detected in mosquitoes right after their metamorphosis just as the transstadial transmission (the passage of a microbial parasite from one developmental stage of the host to the next) in ticks.

In regards to the first goal of the study, the researchers found that Borreliae could be detected in 10 species of mosquitoes across four different genera. This was out of the 52 species of mosquitoes found in the tested areas of Germany.

The frequency of the bacteria found in mosquitoes was consistent with previous studies, and the number of species it found was due to collection methods and not differences between the species.

In line with previous studies, a notable amount of Borriliae was detected in the mosquitoes’ salivary glands, indicating the possibility that mosquitoes can transmit an infection. Regarding the first goal, the study did not find evidence to show anything conclusively. Still, the findings do suggest that mosquitoes might play the role of being an occasional mechanical vector of Lyme disease.

On the other hand, this study found ground-breaking data in relation to the second goal, which was to find out whether Borreliae can be detected in mosquitoes directly following their metamorphoses. Such findings would be significant because being able to survive and continue from one developmental stage of the host to the next is a crucial step for any vector-borne pathogen to be transmitted later on.

This study, for the first time, found that Borreliae endure the metamorphosis from larvae to pupae, and again from pupae to mosquito. The study confirmed this by capturing larvae, which were tested to have Borreliae. Then, while monitoring the laboratory-hatched specimens at each stage of their metamorphosis, the researchers were able to confirm that the mosquitoes maintained the Borrelia in their organism through the changes despite never having a blood meal.

These findings were the first of their kind, and indicate that the Borriliae in mosquitoes has developed some form of survival methods in mosquitoes, which quiets the concerns of those who might be skeptical of mosquitoes having the capacity to transmit infectious Borrelia to people.

University Hospital of Frankfurt – Mosquito Study

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