proof of antibiotic resistant lyme?

[msf]

I haven't read further than the abstract yet, but this seems like it

could be a very significant study:


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22253822?dopt=Citation


I can anticipate some doctors objecting that this was in monkeys,

which I believe served as the model for HIV infection, but I'm sure

that won't stop them.

 

[msf]

Sorry, didn't mean to write in blank verse, but when I wrote it normally the lines overlapped each other - I've noticed this before with thread topics, anyone know why this is?

 

[duncan]

I believe this is the parallel study to the Klempner study done back in 2001. This was published early 2012.

The Klempner study was one of only four controlled studies that proponents of the IDSA Guidelines point to as demonstrating persistence doesn't happen, and prolonged abx therapy is not only a waste of time, but potentially dangerous.

The Embers et al effort stood in stark contrast to those studies. Although it dealt with monkees instead of human subjects, it offered a strong argument for spirochetal influence post-treatment.

If I recall correctly, the Embers study was supposed to come out shortly after the Klempner publication. Lots of conjecture as to why publication of the Embers results was held up so long.

 

[anciendaze]

This isn't exactly shocking, since there have long been studies showing borrelia persistence in laboratory animals after treatment with antibiotics. Here's a classic study in dogs. In general, larger animals require longer treatment to eliminate pathogens from all tissue reservoirs, so 4 weeks in dogs roughly corresponds to 6 weeks treatment in humans. This shift in treatment times would also apply in going from typical monkeys used in research to humans.

You aren't going to find parallel studies in humans because this requires experimentally infecting known pathogen-free animals which are then sacrificed after treatment to allow detailed examination of all tissues. Depending on such lack of experimental support for the hypothesis of persistent borreliosis in humans to argue that this does not exist is fighting dirty. You will note a significant lack of official interest in finding ways around this impasse. "The science isn't there" and is not going to be there without a change in research.

Pathologists who do examine brains of patients who die with dementia for spirochetes do keep finding them. This should not be considered either new or surprising, there is an old spirochetal disease known to cause dementia. You can argue that few patients are infected with treponema pallidum, but what do you say about finding treponema denticola in the brain? After you examine the list of spirochetes which have turned up at autopsy you will need some very strong evidence to show that borrelia burgdorferi is substantially different. Best current evidence says it is not.

 

[msf]

The Strickner summary I was reading mentioned this alongside a study that was done in mice - was this the Klempner study? Strickner suggested some reasons why the researchers came to contrary conclusions.

P.S. It dealt with the Monkees? Did they get Lyme from the Beatles?

 

[msf]

Oh, I didn't realise that there had been a study done in dogs too.

Re: the doubters, I guess they only allow animal models when the evidence from them fits their own theories.

I think there should be a bad science award given annually like there is a bad sex award (for literature). I can think of a few candidates who would stand a chance every year (one of whose name begins with W).

 

[Martial]

Its not drug resistant as much as they don't recognize cyst forms and the life cycles of the bacteria outside specialists trained in tick borne diseases. It is similar to TB in that it can use bio film to hide from the immune system and certain drugs can't pass that barrier. Among other strategies like this study shows,


http://lymedisease.org/news/lyme_disease_views/lymphnodes.html.

 

[msf]

Yeah, I realised that, I guess I should have titled it 'proof of persisters in monkeys with Lyme after antibiotic treatment.'

On this subject, has anyone followed this closely?

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2011/May/12051101.asp

From what I've read it seemed to be effective in vitro, but there were doubts about its effectiveness in vivo, because they couldn't ensure that the sugar would go to the where the bugs were, but that there was a possibility that mannitol (because it isn't used by the body) might achieve the same effect in vivo.

This seems to be counter-intuitive to patients with chronic bacterial infections, so it will be interesting to see whether this turns out to be effective in patients.

 

[duncan]

I'm not quite sure how to start a new thread here, but this may be important to the Lyme community.

I think there is a movement from the IDSA fringes to mainstream an effort to eliminate late stage Lyme as a clinical entity.

That would reduce Lyme to acute/early stage, and PTLDS. Then it's just a matter of further marginalizing PTLDS patients - indeed, two IDSA peeps authored papers comparing Lyme and PTLDS with CFS and Fibromyalgia, and the results of those two distinct studies concluded PTLDS "fatigue" was minor and not long lasting, and PTLDS/LYME pain did not approach that of fibro patients either in intensity or pain characteristics.

If late stage Lyme can be disappeared, the ramifications to the Lyme community might be dire.

 

[bmoberg337]

I'm not quite sure how to start a new thread here, but this may be important to the Lyme community.

I think there is a movement from the IDSA fringes to mainstream an effort to eliminate late stage Lyme as a clinical entity.

If late stage Lyme can be disappeared, the ramifications to the Lyme community might be dire.

I think it's interesting how opponents to Late Disseminated Lyme and Chronic Lyme argue that there is no sound evidence to support these diagnoses. On the other hand PTLDS is a theory and has no science backing it, yet that is enough to deny the existence of the above mentioned conditions.

 

[duncan]

In the US. the debate about chronic Lyme has raged for years. Same holds true about PTLDS when it was introduced.

But the idea that like Syphilis Lyme progresses through stages has been accepted for decades and permeates Lyme literature from the early 80's through today. Even the IDSA Guidelines are partially segmented by stages.

To remove late stage would be an outrageous move with potentially ruinous results for Lyme patients. I have to wonder what would be at the root of such a dramatic step.

I do realize that in many European countries chronic Lyme and late stage Lyme are used interchangeably. Such is not the case in the U.S.

 

[Wayne]

I recently wildcrafted some teasel root, and was reading up on it last night to learn specifics on how to make a teasel root tincture. I ran across the following--a concept I had never run across before. Here's a link to the full article: -- Teasel: Honoring the Bones of Our Ancestors

"According to naturalmoxie.com, Teasel has a unique ability to get the spirochetes where they “hide out” in the joints and drive them into the blood stream, where other medicines (be they herbal or pharmaceutical) can then eradicate them."

 

[msf]

I think Bmoberg337 hit the nail on the head, not just with regard to Lyme but also PVFS, etc. The proponents of them don't seem to feel that they need to have a coherent hypothesis or any evidence to back up their claims.

As for getting rid of Late Lyme, that would obviously be completely illogical, but I guess that might not stop them...if late Lyme Disease doesnt exist, whats the point in treating early lyme disease? Or will they have to make up a new category, late/early Lyme Disease? Their position is already close to this one, since they believe that patients who have had it for 2 hours and those that have had it for 20 years need the same length course of Doxy.

 

[Valentijn]

As for getting rid of Late Lyme, that would obviously be completely illogical, but I guess that might not stop them...if late Lyme Disease doesnt exist, whats the point in treating early lyme disease?

The theory is that Lyme is always cured by a course of oral antibiotics lasting a month or less.

If someone is still complaining after that, they are trying to suggest that the lingering problem must be psychosomatic. Though there is some limited acknowledgement that there might be specific permanent symptoms resulting from the cured infection.

 

[msf]

Yeah, I realise that's what some of them are trying to do...I really think doctors and scientists (if not the population en masse) need to be taught logic at school. I was just reading through the arguments about the efficiency of two-tiered testing again, and the author pointed out that the con group often use statistics from EM patients, where serology is often negative (because antibodies haven't developed yet) but cultures are often positive. The author then went on to say that the two-tiered testing is 87% sensitive in disseminated Lyme disease, where they point out that cultures are often negative. Unfortunately, they forgot to point out that culture is the gold-standard, and that in the absence of this, one of the standards used is that of the CDC, which requires clinical symptoms and positive serology. So they are evaluating new tests by how well they agree with the existing tests,(and I assume they would evaluate new criteria by how well they agree with the existing criteria).

Does anyone else see a problem with this? How, if such a standard is used, could a test prove to be more sensitive than the existing one? Does that mean that the current tests are infallible? If they are, what's the point in evaluating new tests? This kind of faulty logic seems to be everywhere you look when it comes to Lyme.

 

[duncan]

Circular reasoning is a hallmark of the Old Guard. Their studies are rife with examples.

If the stage concept of Lyme were eliminated, there would only be acute Lyme. There would be no early Lyme. Since the dogma is that almost all treatment is successful in eradicating Borrelia, all acute symptoms that survive post-treatment would be unrelated to Lyme. The patient at this point would be said to have PTLDS. Except for Steere's refractory arthritis efforts, there really is no meaningful govt sponsored research into characterizing PTLDS. It's a gaping hole of no return, certainly of no susbstantive progress on the treatment front. I met with a govt Lyme official recently and that person advised me to exercise more and improve my sleep habits. Sound familiar?

The stage concept needs to be a line in the sand for the Lyme community. Efforts to eliminate it are emblematic of a small group's desire to harness the disease for its own purposes, including diagnostic revenues, protection from liabilities, and control over future attempts to characterize the disease and its victims.

 

[msf]

Yeah, I agree about what it signifies, and it will hurt a lot of people who aren't educated about it, but it won't affect people like the ones on this forum, apart from reducing the amount of research being done, which will only be felt in the long run. On the other hand, it will probably make more people go to doctors with an alternative approach, giving them more funds to do their own research, and thereby further eroding the credibility of the IDSA. So it is depressing, and something to be resisted, but I don't think it will change the status quo that much...after all, are they doing any decent research at the moment?

 

[duncan]

Well, first of all, the status quo sucks. My concern is this will make a bad situation worse. And you are correct that they are not doing much meaningful research: Govt sponsored efforts are not to be found for late stage research, and there is NO treatment research. The question is: why?

You have to ask what mainstream Lyme has to gain by disappearing late stage. Their old tag line used to be "hard to get, easy to cure". They had to deep-six the former when they acknowledged the number of annual incidences in the US was NOT 30,000, but 10 times that number, 300,000. But they still cling to that easy to cure myth.

The problem area for them isn't acute/early stage Lyme - it has always been late stage. This is where Lyme just refuses to roll over and play dead. This is where you hear the dire warnings about symptoms refractory to treatment, and allusions to increased difficulties to realizing any kind of effective therapy that enjoys sustained recoveries. If only early Lyme existed, then problems associated with late stage fall by the wayside. Good for some interests. Not good for patients. At least with late stage, patients can often get long term therapy, even if it's only oral abx. That won't happen for late stage patients who are "converted" to PTLDS patients. It will be antidepressants and anxiety meds and painkillers and GET and CBT.

 

[msf]

Yeah, it won't happen if they aren't educated about the subject, or if they just can't afford to see someone that actually knows something about Lyme...I might just be looking for a silver lining, but it's possible that this kind of thing will increase the demand for real Lyme doctors (I'm not totally sure how economics works, but then I'm not sure how ILADS or the CDC work either).

 

[msf]

I've just read that in the UK only 20% of schools send students to medical school, so you would only have to teach logic in those schools (the class system is great!)