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Tag : Borrelia Burgdorferi

Interview with Dr. Randi Eikeland at the NorVect Conference 2015

Eikeland is the head The Norwegian National Advisory Unit on Tick-borne Diseases in Kristiansand, Norway.

In the interview, Eikeland talks about Borreliosis and whether it can turn chronic. She does not believe that patients that get Lyme disease and not get well can have a persisting infection. In the interview she claims that there is not enough evidence showing that this is the case in vivo. She also goes on to tell about patients that believe they are ill with Lyme disease, but maybe they have something completely different. She does not advocate long term antibiotics.
She explains that certain Lyme literate doctors and patients live in a different world from the one Eikeland and her colleagues live in. She however claims that it’s a good thing to meet at conferences like NorVect to discuss even though one is of different opinions.

Interview with Prof. Ying Zhang at the NorVect Conference 2015

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).

Curious Motions of Syphilis and Lyme Disease Bacteria

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.

Read the whole blog entry here.

Spirochete

Borrelia burgdorferi forms drug-tolerant persister cells.

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

Dieterle silver stain of genital culture from Patient 12. Note darkly staining spirochete. Formalin fixed slide, 400× magnification