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1 day ago · Tulane University researchers have identified a promising new approach to treating persistent neurological symptoms associated with Lyme disease, offering hope to patients who suffer from long-term effects of the bacterial infection, even after antibiotic treatment. Their results were published in Frontiers in Immunology.
Dec 26, 2023 · Treatment of Lyme Disease. 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. These regimens are consistent with guidance published by the ...
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- Overview
- The need for a new treatment
- Azlocillin — an ‘amazing compound’
A new study gives hope that an effective treatment for Lyme disease may be available in the future. The new treatment involves the drugs cefotaxime and azlocillin.
The new paper appears in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.
Lyme disease affects nearly 300,000 people a year in the United States and around 230,000 people a year in Europe, according to an article in the Journal of Public Health.
Bacteria belonging to the group Borrelia burgdorferi cause Lyme disease. Most people develop it after being bitten by a tick that carries the bacteria.
Approximately 60–80% of people with Lyme disease develop a circular red skin rash called erythema migrans around the infected tick bite, and some also develop flu-like symptoms.
Most people develop the rash within 4 weeks of being bitten, but it can appear up to 3 months afterward.
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 cognitive impairment.
These symptoms can continue for months or even years after their initial infection.
Researchers have suggested that this may because of drug-tolerant ‘persisters,’ a group of bacterial cells that survive the initial dose of antibiotics.
“Some researchers think this may be due to drug-tolerant bacteria living in the body and continuing to cause disease,” Jayakumar Rajadas, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine and director of the Biomaterials and Advanced Drug Delivery Laboratory at the Stanford School of Medicine in California.
“Others believe it’s an immune disorder caused by bacteria during the first exposure, which causes a perpetual inflammation condition. Whatever the cause, the pain for patients is still very real.”
Now, a team of researchers from Stanford University in the U.S. and Loyola College in India set out to investigate whether two different antibiotic drugs, cefotaxime and azlocillin, could prove more effective at killing B. burgdorferi in the early stages of the disease than the currently prescribed antibiotic doxycycline.
The study team first tested to see whether different doses of the drugs could kill drug-tolerant borrelia bacteria grown on laboratory plates better than a standard Lyme disease antibiotic (doxycycline).
They carried out each experiment three times in triplicate (nine times in total). The team tested the drugs on different ages of bacteria, colonies that were 3 days old and growing rapidly, and colonies that were 7–10 days old and had reached a growth plateau.
At high concentrations, both drugs could kill all the drug-resistant borrelia cells and outperformed the standard Lyme disease antibiotic. When the study team tested the drugs at lower doses, azlocillin outperformed the standard antibiotic and cefotaxime, which left 20% of the drug-resistant cells alive.
The researchers tested the drugs in a small number of laboratory-bred mice that they infected with the bacteria. They treated the mice at different stages of the disease at 7, 14, and 21 days after infection.
They gave each mouse a daily dose of either azlocillin, cefotaxime, or the standard treatment for Lyme disease for 5 days. They cultured the mouse organs and checked for live bacteria using microscopy and genetic testing 2 days after the last dose.
The researchers found that both the standard treatment and azlocillin completely cleared the infection in the early stages of the disease, while cefotaxime did not.
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.
Oct 20, 2021 · 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 ...
- Timothy Huzar
Prognosis. The prognosis after early treatment of Lyme disease is generally very good. However, the prognosis worsens when diagnosis and treatment are delayed. Most patients with early Lyme disease infection recover with antibiotics and return to their normal state of health. However, some patients suffer from ongoing or recurrent symptoms ...
Sep 1, 2023 · The new research is at a very early stage, but it is an important step to understanding and treating the disease, said Kim Lewis, a Lyme expert and a professor of biology at Northeastern ...
