Monthly Archives: June 2015

The bacteria that cause syphilis and Lyme Disease have something extraordinary in common: they manage to propel themselves through their environment in spite of the fact their tails are located inside their bodies.

The remarkable engineering of these bacteria are probably a major reason spirochetes have been such successful pathogens in humans and other animals. Syphilis and Lyme Disease are better at penetrating our bodies than almost any other organisms. Spirochetes cross barriers that are impenetrable to almost anything else, including basement membranes and the linings of organs like intestines called endothelium that function to keep the kajillions of bacteria in your gut out of the rest of your body. In humans, syphilis and Lyme Disease bacteria easily penetrate the normally sacrosanct blood-brain barrier to infect the central nervous system. Syphilis can invade the placenta and infect an unborn child.

A new study published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotheraphy shows that Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria form drug-resistant persister cells that are not easily killed by antibiotics.

Link to article here

En ny studie viser at borrelia bakterien ikke blir drept av standard antibiotikabehandling som gis her i Norge. Bakteriene kapsler seg inn for å beskytte seg mot immunsystemet og antimikrobiell behandling. Dette kan være en årsak til at mange får tilbakefall etter behandlingsstopp.

Link til engelsk artikkel her

New study shows that Borrelia miyamotoi may be an emerging tickborne infection in the northeastern United States.

Read the whole study in the Annals of Internal Medicine

Hva er historien bak Lyme borreliose? Hvordan vet du om utslettet du har er EM eller ringorm? Hva er egentlig EM? Hvilke andre sykdommer kan du få etter flåttbitt?

Dr Stricker deltok på NorVect konferansen og fortalte blant annet om historien bak Lyme borreliose.
Les Trine Dahlmans betraktninger på bloggen koffiehart

Av Trine Dahlman. Hentet fra bloggen: Koffiehart

“Jeg ble fullstendig sjokkert da jeg ble kjent med disse pasientene. Å se hvor dårlig de blir behandlet, eller mer riktig, ikke behandlet, gjør meg rasende,” sa Lise Askvik da hun entret scenen under årets NorVect-konferanse. Som konferansier guidet hun foredragsholdere og publikum gjennom to dager med vitenskapelige artikler og erfaringsbasert kunnskap om vektorbårne sykdommer, hovedsakelig fra flått.

For å lese hele intervjuet se her

The NorVect Conference 2015 has come to its end, but we have many good memories from the event, not to mention much more knowledge on vector-borne diseases than we had before.

To view some of the pictures for the conference, please see this link.

Stay tuned for all the movies that will be released in some weeks.

Ying Zhang Ph.D, MD, who spoke at the NorVect conference this past weekend has published very interesting new research today in the journal “Emerging Microbes & Infections”.

BACKGROUND:
Several studies (incl. animal models) have indicated the continued presence of B. burgdorferi in some form and suggest that current Lyme treatment may not be sufficient to eliminate B. burgdorferi persisters, or that the immune system fails to clear persisting organisms or bacterial debris, which may be underlying causes for those who suffer from non-resolving symptoms of Lyme disease. To date, there is currently no effective antibiotic treatment or preventative strategy for those who suffer from persistent symptoms after Lyme disease.

Consistent with the difficulty to eradicate B. burgdorferi in animal models, B. burgdorferi develops various morphological variant forms, such as round bodies and microcolonies, that are refractory or resistant to antibiotics and stresses. For example, it has been demonstrated that whereas the frontline drugs, such as doxycycline and amoxicillin, kill or inhibit the growing spirochetal form of B. burgdorferi effectively, they have little activity in killing non-growing persisters that are enriched in the stationary phase or microcolonies or as biofilm-like aggregates of B. burgdorferi. There is significant interest in the identification of drugs that target B. burgdorferi persisters.

SUMMARY AND FINDINGS:
Zhang’s research team set out to identify drugs that can more effectively kill B. burgdorferi persisters, and has recently developed a new viability assay using SYBR Green I/propidium iodide (PI) dyes, which allowed them to screen FDA-approved drug library against stationary phase B. burgdorferi persisters. Using this high-throughput assay, they identified a number of drug candidates, such as daptomycin, clofazimine, cefoperazone, and carbomycin that have excellent activity against in vitro B. burgdorferi persisters.

You can read the whole article here