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Dec 26, 2023 · Early diagnosis and proper antibiotic treatment of Lyme disease is important and can help prevent late Lyme disease. The following treatment regimens reflect CDC’s interpretation of the most current data for four important manifestations of Lyme disease.
- Diagnosis and Testing
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- Symptoms
Lyme disease rashes and look-alikes; What you need to know...
- Neurologic Lyme Disease
Neurologic symptoms of Lyme disease occur when the Lyme...
- Erythema Migrans Rash
References. Kowalski TJ, Tata S, Berth W, et al. Antibiotic...
- FAQ
Lyme disease and anaplasmosis are treated with the same...
- Data and Surveillance
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- Why is CDC Concerned About Lyme Disease
Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the...
- Lyme Carditis
Treatment References. Afari ME, Marmoush F, Rehman MU, et...
- Tick Removal and Testing
Information on Lyme disease. Provided by the U.S. Centers...
- Diagnosis and Testing
- Overview
- Lyme disease
- Overlooked antimicrobial
- Eradication?
•Lyme disease affects around 476,000 people in the United States every year.
•Clinicians treat Lyme disease with broad-spectrum antibiotics.
•However, these can damage a person’s gut microbiome, which may contribute to chronic Lyme disease.
•Researchers have identified a narrow-spectrum antibiotic that is effective against the condition.
•This may open the door to the eradication of Lyme disease in the environment.
Researchers have identified a narrow-spectrum antibiotic that is effective against Lyme disease.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Lyme disease is the most common type of indirect disease in the United States. The condition occurs due to bites from black-legged ticks that carry the infection.
A person typically develops Lyme disease when bacteria pass on to them through ticks feeding on their blood. The bacteria — most commonly Borrelia burgdorferi — can cause an infection, with symptoms that include headache, fever, rash, and fatigue.
The CDC notes that without treatment, Lyme disease can spread to a person’s heart, joints, and nervous system, causing intense headaches, painful arthritis, facial palsy, and heart palpitations.
Health experts believe that 476,000 people get Lyme disease each year in the U.S.
Clinicians treat the condition with broad-spectrum antibiotics. And while these are effective at fighting the infection, they also come with downsides.
Broad-spectrum antibiotics can reduce the diversity of a person’s gut microbiome. Researchers have linked this disruption of the gut microbiome to many different chronic diseases.
The researchers looked for compounds that would be effective against B. burgdorferi, the most common bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
To do this, they conducted a selective screen against B. burgdorferi. This identified the compound hygromycin A, a type of antimicrobial found in soil that experts originally identified in 1953.
However, hygromycin A’s original discoverers dismissed it because it was not effective against regular pathogens.
“Nobody really cared about that compound ever since because it’s very weak against regular bacteria,” says Prof. Kim Lewis, of Northeastern University College of Science, Boston, MA, and co-lead author of the present study. “What we discovered is that, yeah, it is very weak against regular pathogens, but exceptionally potent against spirochetes.”
Spirochetes are a type of bacteria characterized by their spiral shape, and they include B. burgdorferi.
“We set out to find such a compound that would selectively kill Borreliella burgdorferi, placing a bet, if you will, that Mother Nature had bothered to evolve a compound to selectively take out spirochetes that live in the soils,” says Prof. Lewis.
The researchers found that hygromycin A did clear the Lyme disease infection in the mice, both when they administered it via injection and using bait that the mice ingested.
The researchers also found that hygromycin A was less disruptive to the mice’s gut microbiomes than conventional broad-spectrum antibiotics.
For the study team, the findings open the possibility of both creating a highly-targeted treatment for Lyme disease in humans and eradicating Lyme disease in the environment.
Scientists might achieve this by distributing bait containing hygromycin A in areas where animals that transmit the ticks that carry B. burgdorferi exist.
Dr. Unnikrishnan said to MNT that “[u]sing hygromycin A baits in natural hosts is an exciting possibility and could be an effective way of preventing transmission. However, further field studies are required first to assess the impact of hygromycin A treatment on environmental reservoirs.”
Stella Huyshe-Shires, a trustee of the U.K. organization Lyme Disease Action, was less sure whether eradication would be possible.
- Timothy Huzar
Mar 25, 2020 · Doctors routinely treat Lyme disease using tetracycline antibiotics, but between 10–20% of people with the disease later develop symptoms of fatigue, pain in their muscles, joints or nerves, and...
The first-line standard of care treatment for adults with Lyme disease is doxycycline, a tetracycline antibiotic. Other antibiotics that have activity against borrelia include the penicillin-like antibiotic, amoxicillin, and the second generation cephalosporin, Ceftin.
Feb 10, 2023 · Treatment. Antibiotics are used to treat Lyme disease. In most cases, recovery will be quicker and more complete the sooner treatment begins. Antibiotic pills. The standard treatment for Lyme disease is an antibiotic taken as a pill. The treatment usually lasts 10 to 14 days. Treatment may be longer depending on your symptoms.
Well-known Lyme researcher Dr. Kim Lewis of Northeastern University has identified an antibiotic that appears to selectively kill Lyme spirochetes while leaving gut microbes alone. This is highly significant because there hasn’t been a drug developed specifically to treat Lyme disease in…well, forever.
The primary treatment is doxycycline, 100 mg twice daily for 10 days in adults, or one of several alternate regimens ( Table 1). Testing is not helpful with typical erythema migrans. For skin...
