Tag : Borrelia Burgdorferi

Prof Ying Zhang from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health explains why Lyme disease is so difficult to treat. Having worked with Tuberculosis (TB) for many years, he sees the similarities and differences between these to bacteria. With Tuberculosis it is known that you have to treat with certain drug combinations that kill the growing form and the non-growing form (persisters) and if you treat shorter than 6 months, the patient will get a relapse.

The bacterium that causes Lyme disease is much more advanced than the TB bacterium, and the main reason is that it also takes a persisting form. These persister forms of the Borrelia bacteria cannot be cultured.

The two views – ILADS and IDSA are two different ways of seeing the same disease. Prof. Zhang thinks they are both right. When it comes to acute Lyme disease, IDSA is right. Then you only need shorter courses of treatment. When the disease turns chronic, longer courses of treatment with the right drug combinations are needed (ILADS view).

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