It starts with the sign. These insects infect people with the bacteria that cause Lyme disease, microbes who are complicated to study, difficult to detect when they cause disease and challenge to treat so that they do not linger in the human body.
Understanding that bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, requires basic research before he creates diagnostics or vaccines, slow progress that is frustrating for people affected by the chronic fatigue and brain fog of long-term Lyme disease or the Lyme-Arctritis joint pain.
“It is simply fundamentally different from in principle all other pathogenic agents,” Brandon Jutras, assistant professor in microbiology immunology in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, told Stat. He is the senior author of two new research papers who were published on Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine.
In both studies, scientists used mouse models to explore unique chemical components that continue to exist in the approximately 15% of people who do not recover from Lyme infections and a syndrome that is comparable to other infection-associated diseases, including Long Covid. One study followed antigens between the bacterial remains that travel to the liver, and the Other study More than 500 approved antibiotics screened to find one that can be safer and more effective in a lower dose than doxycycline for standard or care.
Together they can offer better recognition and possibly lead to alternative treatment choices for the nearly 1,200 people in the United States who develop Lyme disease every day.
The first article studied a mouse model of Lyme disease to track down where part of the cell wall of the bacteria is traveling. While the bacteria grow, they spit out peptidoglycan, a component of the cell wall that works as a large molecular bag. These remains can still cause infection if they are injected into healthy mice. If it accumulates in the liver and continues to exist for weeks, it can be a continuous source of antigens that sees and attacks the immune system.
In earlier research, the authors discovered that people with post-infectious Lyme-Arthritis also had bacterial peptidoglycance wall that drove in the synovial liquid of their inflamed joints. And consistent with other facts about these bacteria, their peptidoglycans are also chemically different.
“We have found that the unusual chemical characteristics of the Borrelia burgdorferi peptidoglycan are able to continue to exist,” Jutras said. “It seems that the liver acts as a sink for these unusual pieces of peptidoglycan.”
And back to that sign: the scientists cannot say it with certainty, but they suspect that a sugar that is worn by ticks can penetrate into the cell walls that are thrown by the bacteria in ways they catch in the liver, keeping the immune system on a high alert. Those antigens of the displayed cell walls that remain can cause Lyme disease after treatment, which has similarities with long COVID and other infection-associated diseases.
The peptidoglycan fragments appeared in the mouse livers, even after less severe Lyme disease, but to a lesser extent.
Amy Proal, a microbiologist who is chief scientific officer at the non -profit Polybio Research Foundation and scientific director of the Cohen Center for Recovery of complex chronic disease on Mount Sinai, told that Stat studies should go beyond the persistent antigens in the peptidoglycancelwanden. She was not involved in the science study on Wednesday translation.
“When we find persistent antigen in patients with long Covid, we interpret our findings differently than this team. I think that is an important thing to consider,” she said. “It is useful, I think, to know that Peptidoglycan can continue to exist a little longer than we thought or something like that. But to be the most extensive and fully understand what can happen in people who get Borrelia and get chronic symptoms, there should be some work to actually look for Borrelie Borrelie, including the patients who have symptoms after the symptoms of Lyme.”
Proal said it is possible that the antigens are actively produced by bacteria that linger in hidden reservoirs, as is the case with the SARS-COV-2 virus in Long Covid.
In response, Jutras said that purified peptidoglycan will only continue to exist with mice, and claims that this work suggests that Lyme can persist without the still present bacteria, due to the unusual characteristics of the peptidoglycan.
“Peptidoglycan can be detected in human patients after oral and/or IV antibiotics. We have previously tried to detect bacterial DNA from B. Burgdorferi in exactly the same patient samples tested in manuscript and could not do this,” he said Stat in an e -mail. “Now it is possible that Borrelia is still present with these human patients, but at levels that are not detectable, even by quantitative PCR. Having said that hardly -detectable levels of B. Burgdorferi (DNA), if present, the significant concentrations of peptidoglycan we cannot do in this stacking.”
The second paper treated disadvantages in standard antibiotics treatment for Lyme infections. Doxycycline is the go-to medication, but it cannot be given to children under the age of 8. Because it is a broad-spectrum antibiotic, it damages useful members of human microbiome while killing the bacteria that cause Lyme disease.
The scientists used an advanced screening process bound by the properties of Borrelia to deliver piperacillin as the best choice, a member of the Penicillin family who could be used at a lower dose and with less off-target effects. The reasoning of the study was that there might already be an approved antibiotic, just not for this purpose.
“With regard to pipericillin and antibiotic therapy, we already know that it is safe with people, but what we don’t know is whether it works to treat Lyme disease in people,” Jutras said. “The obvious step is a clinical test of people, but they are very expensive and they require federal support.”
Piperacillin has not attracted much interest from the private sector because it is a generic antibiotic.
“I think the field is taking incredible steps in all facets of treatment, diagnosis and in prevention. It is desperately needed, given the fast and continuous expansion and increase in the number of cases and geographically, where those cases take place,” he said. “So the research and the field in general, I think, is of the utmost importance and something that is very much in question these days.”
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