Lyme disease bacteria eradicated by new drug in early tests
Note that they&#x27;re carefully dancing around the elephant in the room: As far as I know, no one has ever demonstrated that Lyme spirochetes survive a course of standard antibiotics (Emphasis mine):<p>&gt; Standard treatment of Lyme disease is oral antibiotics, typically doxycycline, in the early stages of the disease; but for reasons that are unclear, the antibiotics don&#x27;t work for up to 20% of people with the tick-borne illness. <i>One possibility is that drug-tolerant bacteria cause the lingering symptoms.</i><p>Many people experience lingering symptoms after contracting Lyme disease. Officially, this is known as &quot;Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome&quot;. The CDC page for the PTLDS has more information: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cdc.gov&#x2F;lyme&#x2F;postlds&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cdc.gov&#x2F;lyme&#x2F;postlds&#x2F;index.html</a><p>These PTLDS symptoms are definitely real, but the idea that persistent lyme infection is the cause of the lingering problems is more of a hypothesis at this point.<p>It will be interesting to see if this new antibiotic produces different outcomes in PTLDS patients, but it&#x27;s misleading to claim that this is the only antibiotic known to act on the Lyme disease spirochetes. The original study specifically explored the action of Azlocillin on Doxycycline-resistant spirochetes. From the study:<p>&gt; Our results also demonstrate that azlocillin and cefotaxime can effectively kill in vitro doxycycline-tolerant B. burgdorferi.<p>The authors point to indirect evidence suggesting that spirochetes might still be present in PTLDS patients, but acknowledge that no one has yet been able to culture a viable spirochete from PTLDS patients:<p>&gt; A recent study in humans demonstrated that B. burgdorferi DNA was identified in PTDLS patient by xenodiagnosis but unable to culture viable spirochete17. In about 85% of Lyme arthritis patients, B. burgdorferi DNA was detected in synovial fluid by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing<p>It would be great if this antibiotic could produce positive outcomes for PTLDS patients, but I wouldn&#x27;t get too excited until we see some human studies. PTLDS (aka &quot;chronic lyme&quot;) has a long history of promising treatments failing to produce results in patients.