Researchers’ discovery may explain difficulty in treating Lyme disease

[Ecoclimber]

Researchers’ discovery may explain difficulty in treating Lyme disease


Researchers’ discovery may explain difficulty in treating Lyme disease

June 1, 2015 by Greg St. Martin @ northeastern.edu:

Northeastern University researchers have found that the bacterium that causes Lyme disease forms dormant persister cells, which are known to evade antibiotics. This significant finding, they said, could help explain why it’s so difficult to treat the infection in some patients.

“It hasn’t been entirely clear why it’s difficult to treat the pathogen with antibiotics since there has been no resistance reported for the causative agent of the disease,” explained University Distinguished Professor Kim Lewis, who led the Northeastern research team.

In other chronic infections, Lewis’ lab has tracked the resistance to antibiotic therapy to the presence of persister cells—which are drug-tolerant, dormant variants of regular cells. These persister cells are exactly what they’ve identified here in Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease...More

 

[duncan]

Yes. See also Ying Zhang et al's work in the same area, and Monica Embers et al.

All three efforts from distinct universities (among them Northeastern, Johns Hopkins and Tulane), suggest a possible explanation as to why mainstream treatments historically may have fallen short in some cases, without even having to explore the influence of cyst forms and shifting Bb surface proteins, and other immune evasion capabilities attributed to Lyme spirochetes.

I am unaware of any meaningful response from the IDSA relative to implications to its 2006 Lyme Guidelines.

 

[GcMAF Australia]

from http://www.publichealthalert.org/lyme-western-blots-made-easy.html
"One problem I have found with this is that if a child has the infection at a very young age the Lyme can hide and be missed on rare occasions even with a top lab. In my Babesia textbook, I quote the brilliant Dr. Robert Bransford (page 312--314), who lists 28 ways Lyme hides from the immune system. How do I know these "negative" Western Blot little children had Lyme? I found all the other co-infections. And after treatment, they began to make Lyme antibodies and became positive over time."