Hello to all! I am day 60 of doxy and feeling 100% better with some mild butterfly like muscle twitches. I am so happy to have my health back but can't help but to be so afraid of this so called cyst form that none of my doctors believe in. What do you guys think? TIA
Leigh
I think this discussion will answer the question for you, Leigh: http://forum.lymediseasesupportnetwork.org/forum/topics/lyme-spirochete-cysts-and-bursting-them
Thank you for the great article. I’m feeling very concerned. I am off doxy 8 days now and feel some of my mild original symtpoms coming back. Should I be concerned? I also noted new intense anxiety and a feeling of "Brain fog"
What should I do?
I think phoning the doctor makes sense, given the brain fog and anxiety. It may be that the doctor tells you to wait another week to give your immune system time to resolve the infection. Let us know what the doctor says.
Thanks for getting back to me! I don’t understand how I was feeling great and now going back down the crapper. Can this happen? Did this happen to you? Thanks so much!
Leigh
Leigh, I am one of the few people on the group who hasn't had lyme. I help out on all the communities. If you post another discussion about the symptoms you are having, I can share it with the group so you can get feedback.
I guess this is a question for tj1.Lewis and Zhang have come out with a new study on persister cells.
http://www.nature.com/emi/journal/v3/n7/full/emi201453a.html
It just looks like another LIVE/DEAD BacLight bacterial viability assay that was performed on round bodies(cysts) which is similar to the study Dr.Sapi did.Your thoughts?
Sort of... They are referring to persisters and acknowledge that there is scant evidence of live cell (including dormant) activity in the instance of PTLDS. They are testing for cell activity with accepted methods and titre numbers. This isn't mystery Lyme that you have to go to Igenex to find. It is the real thing found initially and persisting. If they can come up with a better method of treating it - great.
Willy literally dissected thousands of ticks to find "lyme" or the bacteria named after him. But remember while it exists in many ticks, it is in a form that can not be transmitted. It is only (almost always) transmitable through larve who have been in the new host for 48 hours or so. This little fact has given rise to all kinds of lore eventually the "cyst" thing.
tji said:
It is only (almost always) transmitable through larve who have been in the new host for 48 hours or so.
So the adult black legged tick does not transmit Lyme?That's interesting.Do you have any published material on this subject?
I said ALMOST never.
The adult FEMALE can, however usually never to humans.
When it becomes an adult it generally only has one meal, and that follows mating (sort of the tick version of a cigarette I guess) They almost always mate exactly where they lay their eggs and that is a large furry animal (deer or bear that's why they are called deer/bear ticks) The more interesting thing is that while they are having their only meal of the year, they have sex for the only time, give birth (lay eggs,) and almost immediately die. They do all of this in a day or so ( often short of the time needed to pass the disease on) One would think a human would catch on...... Also don't forget adult females only CRAWL.
As in all things nature there are exceptions.
Heres a quick link, there are better, but I am away from home.
http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/idepc/dtopics/tickborne/ticks.html
Here is some more info on persisters:
Persistent Rumors of Persistent Borrelia. Someone Call the Immune Response
Caskey JR, Embers ME. Persister Development by B. burgdorferi Populations In Vitro. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2015 Jul 27.
Recent work has suggested that a genetically homogeneous bacterial population can dynamically alter gene expression to adapt to changing environmental conditions, resulting in a phenotypically heterogeneous population. These dynamic changes in gene expression can result both from different individual bacterial responses to external stimuli, and from pre-existing variations within individual bacteria causing differing responses. The term “stochastic” is used to describe these changes to denote the randomness in which the changes can occur.
If external stimuli on a bacterial subpopulation randomly trigger expression of genes that induce a state of dormancy, then a persister subpopulation can emerge. If the number of surviving subpopulations is known, then these data can be applied to predict the capability of a subpopulation of bacteria to survive an antibiotic treatment, and therefore, for the population as a whole to persist after antibiotic therapy. Here, the ability of subpopulations to transition from a persister to a non-persister state can be used to indirectly model the chance of finding persister subpopulations within a larger population. B. burgdorferi has been shown to persist when treated with tetracycline antibiotics, but as of yet, the mechanism of B. burgdorferi persistence has not been described.
Two of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics that are used to treat Lyme disease have different metabolic activities. Doxycycline acts on the bacterial 30S ribosomal subunit, while ceftriaxone can generally be described as having beta-lactam activity. Although previous clinical studies showed that doxycycline can be as effective as third-generation cephalosporin antibiotics like ceftriaxone, recent in vitro work suggests that doxycycline may not be as effective as ceftriaxone against stationary-phase bacteria. Importantly, the role of immune responses to infection is integral to the treatment mode for microbiostatic antibiotics like doxycycline such that results from in vitro studies should not be over interpreted to the in vivo situation.
…we performed MIC and MBC assays for doxycycline using a well-characterized strain of B. burgdorferi with varying input cell densities. We then followed these assays with a probability assay, specifically designed to quantify the emergence of persister populations after treatment with doxycycline. Our results indicate that B. burgdorferi growth dynamics affect the response to doxycycline treatment and prompt consideration of this factor when determining effective concentrations.
Low passage Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto strain B31clonal isolate 5A19 was grown at 34C in BSK-II media…. Because the spirochetes are microaerophilic and gene expression is affected by oxygen levels they were grown in a tri-gas incubator set at 5% CO2, 3% O2, and the rest N2 . The B. burgdorferi were seeded at low concentration from a frozen glycerol stock, and then grown to the necessary cell density.
To determine a mathematical model for the growth of persister subpopulations in B. burgdorferi, data from the Probability Assay and Pulse Dose Assay were analyzed. In a given assay with B. burgdorferi, for calculation purposes, a tube was considered a population. Logarithmic growth in bacterial cultures can be defined by the equation P = P0ekt, where P = final population, P0= initial population, k=growth constant, and t=time. To create a model that could ascertain the quantity of persisters in any given population, the time to regrowth using both the probability assay and the pulse dose assay was used to determine t (time to regrowth for the subpopulation P0 that regrows after doxycycline treatment). The final population P is simply defined as the quantity of a population that regrew after treatment, and the growth constant k can be derived from an average growth rate of populations over a defined period of time. While a logistic curve model is commonly used for bacterial batch cultures, applying this to our data did not result in a good fit; the k value derived was much higher than what was observed over several experiments.
The addition of any substance which causes alterations in the individual bacterium or small subpopulations of bacteria can have profound effects on the bacterial population as a whole. These subpopulations, although genetically identical to the bulk population, will uniquely respond to external stimuli. The data suggest that one such external stimulus is the antibiotic doxycycline. These different responses can confer an advantage to survival of the bacterial population as a whole, when the population is subjected to adverse conditions. Since the subpopulations are genetically identical, and have no specific mechanism to inactivate antibiotics, this is fundamentally different from resistance. The bacterial subpopulations which correctly induce the genes that activate dormancy, while the larger population may get killed by an antibiotic, are termed persisters, a term coined by Dr. Joseph Bigger.
While persister formation is not unique to B. burgdorferi, certain characteristics of this pathogen may influence or affect its entrance into dormancy. These spirochetes traverse between commensal inhabitance of ticks, survival and proliferation in reservoir hosts and pathogenic persistence in incidental hosts. Entry into slow growth or dormancy is necessitated by prolonged periods of nutrient deprivation within the unfed tick. In addition, the spirochetes may occupy niches in the mammalian host that receive lower levels of oxygen and blood flow/nutrients. Therefore, the ability to form persisters, while yet stochastic in nature, may be more advantageous for B. burgdorferi than for other bacterial pathogens. Indeed the frequency of B. burgdorferi persisters was observed to be higher than E. coli in a recent report.
This work was performed entirely in vitro and therefore does not take into account the influence of host adaptation, immune responses or the tissue penetration of antibiotic on doxycycline treatment of a B. burgdorferi infection. However, multiple studies in animals have shown that B. burgdorferi is not fully eradicated with antibiotic treatment [Embers, Barthold]. The development of slow-growing or dormant persisters in the presence of doxycycline, a microbiostatic antibiotic would indicate that reliance on immune control coincident with treatment would be necessary for efficacy of antimicrobial therapy. Given the multiple strategies that B. burgdorferi utilizes to evade the immune response, the survival of persisters post treatment with doxycycline is a reasonable possibility. If persisters do develop in vivo, then prolonged antibiotic therapy may not offer significant improvement of clinical outcome, should this be the result of dormant persisters (perhaps also attenuated continuing to elicit inflammatory responses. Our pulse-dose assay results also indicated that pulsing with doxycycline may not be effective. This is in contrast to a recent report, but it is important to note that different antibiotics with different mechanisms were used in those studies.I think the most important statement made here is:"This work was performed entirely in vitro and therefore does not take into account the influence of host adaptation, immune responses or the tissue penetration of antibiotic on doxycycline treatment of a B. burgdorferi infection"Because when you do, you see no evidence of persistence.For example,let's look at the Yale in vitro study.Here is a photo of an antibiotic treated spirochete inside of a mouse ear,morphing into a so called cyst.These mice were cultured and tissue transplanted into non-infected mice,and some mice were left to live for up to six months.The results were always negative.This is not a good sign for the persister theory.But what boggles my mind is that I see many people on these boards taking Flagyl,Tindamax,and GSE with almost no evidence that this stuff works.It's crazy.
Its only proven in fictionalize accounts of science. There strong belief in both cysts and biofilms by a group of practitioners who have added these two "items" to their list of excuses as to why their "treatments" don't work. You know the ones that insurance won't cover, that they want paid up for following their 1000 dollar consults using special "laboratories" etc. Of course when they make you sick they have a term for that too called "herxing"
None the less the realm of "film busters" has certainly added to their profit potential
The ILADS and the organizations are NOT a medical society except in their own minds. In few states where their political action has ended in a compromise of independent review, their science was still determined non conclusive. Research often looks promising in the early stages but it does not often pan out on broader review. The concept of the NIH, the parallel organizations of the world along with the majority of physicians and bio-sicientists in the world getting together to cook up some grand scheme is ludicrous let alone carry it out. These are guys who can't agree on what to have for lunch. That it is a contest between a group of infectious disease docs and the lyme literate docs is even more far fetched. There is a much broader base than that.
It is for THAT reason ILADS and their materials are not welcome here. The official statement is here:
http://forum.lymediseasesupportnetwork.org/page/lyme-and-ptlds
There are sites where one can debate the politics of lyme this is not one of them.