[HN Gopher] Lyme disease bacteria eradicated by new drug in earl...
___________________________________________________________________
Lyme disease bacteria eradicated by new drug in early tests
Author : dempedempe
Score : 763 points
Date : 2020-04-02 23:25 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scopeblog.stanford.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (scopeblog.stanford.edu)
| dumbneurologist wrote:
| I am a neurologist.
|
| My main comments are the same from a thread about lyme on HN 7
| months ago [1]. If you follow it to it's terminal conclusion, it
| shows that neurologists had a standard course of therapy for
| lyme. The alt-lyme community insisted that it was too short, and
| you needed long term treatment (with a duration based on their
| own experiences/treatment regimens). So conventional medicine
| studied the longer courses of treatment, and found there was no
| difference when studied in an objective way (randomized double
| blind comparison). Well, as soon as that happened, the goal posts
| got moved back, and they alt-lyme community said "well of course
| the study was negative! the treatment course wasn't long enough!
| It needs to be 12 weeks, not 8 weeks" (or whatever), even though
| they had consistently been saying 8 prior to the study. And
| _still_ conventional medicine is open minded about any evidence
| that can be provided. That 's how science works! But you are
| going to need to pay for the evidence, lyme people, because we
| feel like we did our due diligence with the first study, and
| don't need a repeat of the public health resources that were
| wasted searching for the autism-vaccine link over and over again.
|
| Even the other treatment outlined in this blog post (disulfuram)
| has an open study that is still looking for volunteers. That
| tells you a little bit about the level of need (modest, but not
| zero) and the disinterest of the patient community in advancing
| science (you can draw your own conclusions here).
|
| Related to this Stanford post specifically, I'm disappointed.
|
| > We'd been bitten by unseen ticks harboring the parasites that
| cause Lyme disease and babesiosis, a malaria-like disease
|
| It's far (far!) less like malaria than it is to syphilis. It's a
| bit like saying "this is a border collie, which is similar to a
| Maine Coone". Ok, well... kind of. To the extent that they are
| both mammals. But why are we not comparing the border collie to a
| great dane or a poodle? Because those are just as familiar, and
| way more similar.
|
| What syphilis and lyme have in common is that they are both
| spirichete bacteria, and a huge portion of the disease burden if
| it's not diagnosed quickly (and it's often not...) is due to
| autoimmune injury. You can completely kill all the bacteria in
| the chronically infected person, and their life will not get any
| better, because the autoimmunity is present, and unrelenting.
| Which is the second big criticism of this blog post: killing all
| the bacteria is not the challenge, and this discovery, while
| awesome, is not awesome for the reasons described.
|
| PragmaticPulp really nailed it here with what is now the top
| comment on this thread.
|
| > for reasons that are unclear, the antibiotics don't work for up
| to 20% of people with the tick-borne illness. One possibility is
| that drug-tolerant bacteria cause the lingering symptoms.
|
| these reasons are only unclear to the alt-lyme community.
|
| > Many researchers believe that doxycyline's inability to clear
| the persisters may account for the ongoing symptoms of some Lyme
| sufferers.
|
| Yes, the same researchers that are working on climate change for
| Exxon. It doesn't mean they won't disprove climate change, but it
| means they are outside the conventional understanding of this
| area of science.
|
| Overall, though, the science story here is legitimately cool! The
| scientists are using the application of a high-throughput system
| to test multiple compounds with known safety profiles against a
| pathogenic organism. That's an awesome form of problem solving
| consistent with the hacker ethos, and is done a disservice when
| presented along side this alt-lyme woo.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20749216
| vimy wrote:
| >Even the other treatment outlined in this blog post
| (disulfuram) has an open study that is still looking for
| volunteers. That tells you a little bit about the level of need
| (modest, but not zero) and the disinterest of the patient
| community in advancing science (you can draw your own
| conclusions here).
|
| This shows a lack of empathy. Patients are either too sick to
| travel or lack the money. And how would they hear about this
| trial when so many doctors, like you, deny the severity of the
| problem? But the main reason is that patients don't need the
| trial, Lyme communities are full of people taking disulfiram on
| their own and finally recovering.
|
| www.disulfiram.net
|
| See my other comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22769152
| dumbneurologist wrote:
| > This shows a lack of empathy.
|
| Well, now you are attacking my humanity. It's very difficult
| to have constructive dialog about these issues when
| individuals attack the speaker, and not what's being said. We
| are talking about public health policy, which necessarily
| glosses over individual patients who are suffering and
| aggregates them into cold, sterile statistics in order to
| make decisions that are best for society. It's not
| particularly compassionate, but it's unavoidable if you want
| resource allocation to be proportional to need.
|
| > like you, deny the severity of the problem
|
| This is a straw man argument, where you take a crummy version
| of my argument and knock it down. "Severity" is not the word
| I used. I said "level of need", which is different because it
| takes severity (magnitude) _and_ frequency into account.
| Progeria is a devastating (severe) disease, but it 's also
| exceptionally uncommon. From a public health standpoint, both
| are an important part of determining the level of need, and
| therefore the level of support that these problems receive.
|
| > how would they hear about this trial
|
| from the internet, where the conventional doctors you are
| assailing created clinicaltrials.gov in order to make such
| information accessible to everybody.
|
| > But the main reason is that patients don't need the trial,
| Lyme communities are full of people taking disulfiram on
| their own and finally recovering.
|
| Nothing makes us happier than when our patients are connected
| with effective treatments. Nevertheless, the publications you
| site appear to lack random assignment, placebo control, or a
| double blind. Therefore I find the data uncompelling, even as
| I am happy to see that there is a trial for it; I hope it
| includes these three elements which make the results most
| meaningful.
|
| Absent that study it remains possible that disulfuram will be
| the miracle cure you claim that it is, but I'm not
| _expecting_ that to happen, and I suspect that chronic lyme
| will be a topic on HN in another 9 months exactly because the
| needle hasn 't moved far enough. Please prove me wrong!
| That's how big breakthroughs are made! (witness h pylori
| infection and gastric ulcers). But please excuse me if I
| don't hold my breath for the announcement, and advocate more
| more conventional research during that time.
| vimy wrote:
| >Well, now you are attacking my humanity.
|
| I do.
|
| >But you are going to need to pay for the evidence, lyme
| people, because we feel like we did our due diligence with
| the first study, and don't need a repeat of the public
| health resources that were wasted searching for the autism-
| vaccine link over and over again.
|
| Because this, especially 'lyme people', and other elements
| of your post show your disdain towards Lyme patients. Can
| you imagine someone in the 80's saying those 'AIDS people'
| should fund their own research? This kind of behavior
| towards patients who are suffering severely is exactly why
| so many fall in the arms of charlatans and quacks.
| dumbneurologist wrote:
| The post I'm responding to is a stanford researcher who
| is posting about lyme disease. Is she a lyme sufferer? If
| she is she doesn't say so, and I'm not making any
| assumptions.
|
| You are attacking me for saying "lyme people" even as you
| use "lyme patients" in the same sentence. There is no
| difference: both use lyme as an adjective to define a
| subpopulation using a completely innocuous starting
| population ("people" v "patients"). I'm just starting
| with a bigger group, because unaffected family, friends,
| etc can have these opinions too.
| vimy wrote:
| From the context it was clear you used it as a
| pejorative. The tone of your original post was: Lyme
| patients should stop whining, it's not that bad of a
| disease.
|
| In reality, patients with Lyme have a worse quality of
| life than those with AIDS or cancer. It's that bad. And
| what you wrote tells me that you, as a doctor, don't seem
| to understand that.
| nerdponx wrote:
| They're comparing babesiosis to malaria, not Lyme.
|
| A lot of the "Lyme-literate" discussion (from a layperson's
| perspective) talks about: 1) tick-borne coinfections like
| Babesia, 2) Borrelia "hiding out" in parts of the body where
| antibiotics don't circulate easily like nerve tissue.
|
| I don't typically see either point addressed in these kinds of
| discussions. Is the 2nd one even plausible biologically?
| hhas01 wrote:
| Something starting to really itch here, and, no, it's not a tick
| bite.
|
| Is there a reliable scientific cite+ for this PR piece's
| statement that "antibiotics don't work for up to 20% of people
| with [Lyme disease]"?
|
| Because the only "20%" I'm seeing commonly mentioned elsewhere
| describes the 10-20% of patients who develop post-infection
| sequelae. Which is NOT the same as "antibiotics don't work".
|
| Or has Stanford PR just put its size thirteen in its mouth?
|
| (+And I don't mean the "Lyme-literate" quacks and other AltMed
| scammers.)
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Note that they'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):
|
| > 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't work for up
| to 20% of people with the tick-borne illness. _One possibility is
| that drug-tolerant bacteria cause the lingering symptoms._
|
| Many people experience lingering symptoms after contracting Lyme
| disease. Officially, this is known as "Post-Treatment Lyme
| Disease Syndrome". The CDC page for the PTLDS has more
| information: https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/postlds/index.html
|
| 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.
|
| It will be interesting to see if this new antibiotic produces
| different outcomes in PTLDS patients, but it'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:
|
| > Our results also demonstrate that azlocillin and cefotaxime can
| effectively kill in vitro doxycycline-tolerant B. burgdorferi.
|
| 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:
|
| > 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
|
| It would be great if this antibiotic could produce positive
| outcomes for PTLDS patients, but I wouldn't get too excited until
| we see some human studies. PTLDS (aka "chronic lyme") has a long
| history of promising treatments failing to produce results in
| patients.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > no one has ever demonstrated that Lyme spirochetes survive a
| course of standard antibiotics
|
| This is true, but what I think most people don't realize is
| that the evidence that antibiotics kill the bacteria in the
| first place is also extremely dubious. If you read the main
| paper, it literally boils down to "people who take antibiotics
| are less likely to get a rash."[1]
|
| [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm200107123450201
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| You linked to a study of single-dose Doxycycline as potential
| prophylaxis. That's not how Lyme disease is treated.
|
| Lyme disease treatment protocols are shown here:
| https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/treatment/index.html
|
| Doxycycline is generally used for 14-21 days, twice daily,
| not a one-time dose as used in your linked study.
|
| Even the linked study shows that Doxycycline acts on B.
| burgdorferi, even in the difficult stationary phase. Scroll
| down to Figure 6:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-59600-4 .
| Obviously Azlocillin is superior in this in vitro study,
| hence the news. But it still shows that Doxycycline is active
| against the bacteria. It's too bad that the authors didn't
| continue the test long enough to see Doxycycline either reach
| zero (presumably) or level off. Seems like a crucial piece of
| data that they strangely neglected to measure.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/tickbornediseases/tick-bite-
| prophy...
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/tickbornediseases/tick-bite-
| prophy...
|
| Please read the study and the CDC web page you're linking
| to. They don't support your point.
|
| From the CDC link you provided:
|
| > Doxycycline (100 mg orally BID X 14 days) is generally
| recommended for prophylaxis in adults.
|
| From the study you linked to above:
|
| > A single 200-mg dose of doxycycline given within 72
| hours
|
| The CDC recommends a 14-day course of twice-daily dosing
| (BID = twice daily). It has no relationship to the
| single-dose NJEM study you linked to above.
| [deleted]
| Alex3917 wrote:
| You're reading the prophylaxis guide for Tularemia, not
| Lyme. The section on lyme says:
|
| "In areas that are highly endemic for Lyme disease, a
| single prophylactic dose of doxycycline (200 mg for
| adults or 4.4 mg/kg for children of any age weighing less
| than 45 kg) may be used to reduce the risk of acquiring
| Lyme disease after the bite of a high risk tick bite."
|
| You can also see their guidelines for doctors here:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/resources/FS-Guidance-for-
| Clinician...
| [deleted]
| hinkley wrote:
| Lyme disease talk just makes me think of Nicholas Zakas and
| then I get bummed out.
|
| I know there's a guy, or maybe he represents a group of
| researchers, who thinks that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is caused
| by inflammation in the brain, either due to some undetectable
| infection, or just a misfiring that is a lingering effect of
| some other insult (sounds to me like a histamine response aka
| allergy).
|
| If your body thought you had the flu but you didn't, you'd be
| knocked on your ass not unlike many people with CFS or Lyme.
| And if it _never stopped_ you 'd be in pretty bad shape a year
| in.
|
| So. Are we treating microbes that don't culture in a petri
| dish, or are we solving an autoimmune response gone whacky? You
| could really ask the same question about Crohn's or IBS.
|
| I recall years ago reading a long story about a consultant who
| was called in to figure out why this black soot was all over a
| neighborhood around a brewery. The brewery said it was diesel
| exhaust. But why only this neighborhood? He heard of a similar
| problem is some town in the UK. But Petri dish after Petri dish
| cultured nothing that could explain the black soot. Ergo, it's
| not microbial.
|
| Our intrepid consultant pours a small amount of distilled
| spirits onto a sample dish, and gets a bunch of black shit. The
| 'soot' was feeding off the Angel's Share (evaporative losses
| from the brewery), and would barely grow without it. Vigorous
| growth in vivo, negligible growth in vitro.
|
| We've come up with a cure or treatment for so many microbes
| that we can detect, but how do we know we're detecting them
| all? People die of cancer not because cancer is getting worse
| (well, pollution notwithstanding) but because Cancer is
| patient. There's a lot of space in the middle for new vectors
| to slip in.
| jamisteven wrote:
| Great writing.
| hinkley wrote:
| Thanks. I can be hit or miss. Maybe I need an editor :)
|
| Sometimes I read old stuff and think, "wow, I said that?"
| other times, "I have no idea what point I was trying to
| make."
| Technetium wrote:
| Thank you for this comment. It prompted me to look into
| Nicholas Zakas and his story. I've decided to make my way to
| a Lyme disease specialist based what his information lead me
| to think about co-infection.
| HeadsUpHigh wrote:
| Smart talking aside it's possible and relatively easy to
| identify microbes without growing them. When an immuno-
| suppresive is effective at reducing symptoms you know it's an
| autoimmune disorder. You can even find specific anti-bodies
| in some cases.
|
| >You could really ask the same question about Crohn's or IBS.
|
| No you couldn't. They are clearly auto-immune disorders.
|
| Out of curiosity, do you have any formal training on
| medicine/physiology or is your knowledge base self-aquired?
| majormajor wrote:
| This seems to ignore the diseases we don't understand, that
| don't fit clearly those criteria, like PSC.
| rfrey wrote:
| Your comment appears incredibly arrogant to me.
| Trivializing detection of auto-immune disorders tells me
| immediately you have no experience in the field, or if you
| do you are theory-heavy and practice-light.
|
| My daughter has an auto-immune disorder and it took two
| years and a brain biopsy for the best pediatricians in
| Canada to determine it was auto-immune related. Of course
| you may dismiss that by saying there are no good doctors in
| Canada because they're not from (wherever you're from), but
| your casual dismissal of the complexity of these disorders
| is simply wrong.
|
| And your last sentence is clearly not just "out of
| curiosity".
| cc81 wrote:
| IBS is "clearly not" as it is a diagnosis based more on
| symptoms (many different) and there is no clear
| understanding of the cause behind it.
|
| And if you look at IBD such as Crohn's or Ulcerative
| Colitis then sure.
| smallnamespace wrote:
| There is a growing consensus in immunology/rheumatology
| that infections may be a major cause of autoimmunity. One
| mechanism is molecular mimicry - antigens from foreign
| invaders that are similar to your body's own proteins
| trigger your immune system to attack both self and invader.
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199912303412707
| stainforth wrote:
| Why is the auto-immune response chronic, if say the
| original infection passes? Or is the infection constant
| as well?
| hinkley wrote:
| Viruses typically invade a cell by latching onto a part
| of the cell membrane, usually a receptor of some sort.
| Those receptors are for some biologic process from
| regulation to nutrition. If it can't mimic any structure
| it can't reproduce and will be selected out.
|
| An antibody is in some ways similar. They latch onto the
| bacteria or virus, but instead of invading they glom on
| and then signal the body to come dispose of this thing.
|
| If your body picks the wrong feature for the pattern,
| then the antibody could attach to healthy tissue. Maybe
| one particular type, like insulin cells, or myelin.
| darkerside wrote:
| > When an immuno-suppresive is effective at reducing
| symptoms you know it's an autoimmune disorder.
|
| Aren't there diseases where someone are caused not by the
| microbe directly but by the body's immune reaction to it?
|
| > Out of curiosity, do you have any formal training on
| medicine/physiology or is your knowledge base self-aquired?
|
| Argument from authority (or lack thereof) is pretty
| contrary to the HN ethos, imo. You're not right because
| your degree says so, but because the facts do.
| dempedempe wrote:
| > Aren't there diseases where someone are caused not by
| the microbe directly but by the body's immune reaction to
| it?
|
| Yep. For example, that's what causes the "cytokine storm"
| in COVID-19.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| > Out of curiosity, do you have any formal training on
| medicine/physiology or is your knowledge base self-aquired?
|
| This isn't an argument that supports your reasoning. It's
| just an appeal to authority.
|
| > When an immuno-suppressive is effective at reducing
| symptoms you know it's an autoimmune disorder.
|
| Is surgery an autoimmune disorder? A lot of doctors will
| give a patient steroids to reduce inflammation after
| surgery.
| zxexz wrote:
| I think you raise an excellent point, that many don't really
| think about. Detection is hard, and research on microbes is
| hard if you can't grow them in-vitro. There is research in
| this space. A few years ago, I had a lecture from Slava
| Epstein, a professor who has made some major inroads in this
| space[0].
|
| [0] https://experiments.springernature.com/articles/10.1038/n
| pro...
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Detection is hard indeed. Here is an interesting research
| on patients with neurological disabilities though normal
| imaging (MRI) results, but abnormalities found when
| inspected using diffuse tensor imaging:
| https://nn.neurology.org/content/5/3/e456
| Beltiras wrote:
| Don't Crohn's and IBS nigh disappear when using CBD heavy
| Cannabis? Pointing towards a combination of inflammation and
| stress.
| hinkley wrote:
| Ibuprofen doesn't make the flu go away, but it protects you
| from having a seizure from high fever.
| kortex wrote:
| I really enjoy your writing style. Flows extremely well.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Not to get in this heavily politicized fray, but PTDLS sure
| sounds easiest to explain as permanent damage after the
| disease. I mean, we already know nerves heal poorly. Why don't
| I hear more about this hypothesis?
| tempestn wrote:
| I don't have any knowledge beyond what's in this article, but
| it appears that there is some evidence of Lyme bacteria
| surviving antibiotics, and the reason why this can occur:
|
| "According to the recent study, azlocillin shows promise
| because it appears to be able to kill the two morphological
| forms of the Lyme bacteria -- the actively replicating spiral
| forms and the semi-dormant round-body forms.
|
| Azlocillin also appears to kill drug-tolerant persisters very
| effectively. These protective persisters form when the bacteria
| are threatened with defensive immune system biochemicals or
| antibiotics. After the threat has passed, the bacteria can
| reemerge to cause active disease. Many researchers believe that
| doxycyline's inability to clear the persisters may account for
| the ongoing symptoms of some Lyme sufferers."
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Yes, but note that they also admit that we only have some
| indirect suggestions that persistent infection is the cause
| of PTLDS symptoms:
|
| > Many researchers believe that doxycyline's inability to
| clear the persisters may account for the ongoing symptoms of
| some Lyme sufferers
|
| "Many researchers believe" is not the language you use when
| you have concrete evidence supporting the claim.
|
| To date, no one has been able to culture these supposedly
| persistent bacteria from a PTLSD patient. Researchers are
| relying on indirect evidence, with no explanation for why the
| spirochetes can't be found in PTLSD patients.
| smallnamespace wrote:
| Your evidence bar may be unrealistically high here--Lyme
| has never been successfully cultured in any context (unless
| you count xenodiagnosis as a form of culturing).
| oblib wrote:
| Well, all he's really doing here is pointing out it's not
| time to pop the cork on the bottle yet.
|
| That's not the same as saying this work won't help lead
| to that. We can all hope it does while waiting to know
| for sure.
|
| I appreciate the additional info and context provided.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Lyme has never been successfully cultured in any
| context
|
| Not true. Not sure where you are reading that.
|
| Lyme is difficult to culture, but it can be cultured:
| Scroll down to the "Culture" section:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4441761/
|
| Regardless, my bar for evidence would be human trials in
| PTLDS patients with Azlocillin. Given that Azlocillin is
| already FDA approved and the researchers initially
| started studying it in 2016, I'm surprised no one has
| tried it yet.
| hhas01 wrote:
| "As far as I know, no one has ever demonstrated that Lyme
| spirochetes survive a course of standard antibiotics"
|
| QFT.
|
| While PTLDS is a real thing (being long-term sequelae to the
| original Lyme infection), be _very_ wary of anything labeled
| "chronic lyme", which is a common code-word concoction of
| "Lyme-literate" MDs /DOs, naturopaths, and other quacks for
| peddling their nostrums (including permanent courses of
| antibiotics; a great way to make anyone sick as a dog).
|
| https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/?s=lyme
|
| --
|
| Bonus irony: GSK actually created a successful vaccine against
| Lyme 30 years ago:
|
| https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/7/17314716/lym...
|
| No prizes for guessing who destroyed that.
| ejstronge wrote:
| This is amazing - thanks so much for the LYMERix link. I'm
| nearly done with medical school and somehow never heard this
| story!
| mrfusion wrote:
| Do PTLDS patients actually show active antibodies against lyme?
| That would be a good indication what's going on.
| megous wrote:
| "Antibodies normally persist in the blood for months or even
| years after the infection is gone; therefore, the test cannot
| be used to determine cure."
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/diagnosistesting/index.html
| mrfusion wrote:
| Sorry I meant IgM not IgG.
| megous wrote:
| The page says that: "Positive IgM results should be
| disregarded if the patient has been ill for more than 30
| days."
|
| The reason may be this:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S119874
| 3X1...
| mrfusion wrote:
| Thanks for responding. But that study says they assumed
| the results were false positives.
|
| Maybe for the purpose of that paper that's fine. But I'm
| not sure if it supports your statement.
| megous wrote:
| They also list a few reasons for the assumption.
|
| Anyway, the study itself is not the reason for the quoted
| statement on the CDC page. I was just trying to find some
| relevant basis for the statement, and this study has some
| reasons listed in the dicussion/conclusion.
| FranciscusG wrote:
| But they give no scientific arguments for that. They
| simply voice an ill-argued opinion that basically amounts
| to that they do not BELIEVE in IgM antibodies for Bb
| s.l., even though the test objectively does show them in
| a large number of people diagnosed and treated for
| Borreliosis.
| James_Henry wrote:
| >> 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
|
| The previous sentence is also important:
|
| >Many research studies has [sic] shown that B. burgdorferi
| establishes persistent infections after antibiotic treatment in
| various animal models.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I'll review the citations in this study once again, but the
| evidence for lingering spirochetes _in humans_ is always
| thin. Much of it relies on indirect testing that is difficult
| to replicate or prone to laboratory errors.
|
| I'd love to be completely wrong and for this to be a game-
| changing solution, but after years of following this research
| I'm suspicious of the idea that persistent yet mysteriously
| undetectable (in humans) spirochetes are responsible for
| PTLSD symptoms.
| power wrote:
| I'm interested in your opinion of the citations too. They
| purport to show persistence beyond standard treatment in
| mice, dogs, macaques and humans, the latter via
| xenodiagnosis and PCR. PCR is pretty direct.
| wolco wrote:
| The idea of lingering unwanted resistant bacteria not being
| killed by antibiotics have been shown true with other spore
| type bacteria. I don't have the background in this specific
| bacteria, why do you believe it would be so different?
| loeg wrote:
| It seems like their opinion is informed on the basis of
| the existing scientific evidence, which is eminently
| reasonable, IMO.
| caycep wrote:
| In my (brief) experience with PTLDS sufferers, there have been
| a couple of disturbing realizations/experiences:
|
| 1) it seems that "chronic lyme specialists" are physicians who
| realized that each patient they diagnose with "chronic lyme" is
| potentially a cash cow. In that they can be persuaded to pay
| out of pocket for regimens of IV infusions of antibiotics
| costing up to tens of thousands of dollars (and which make no
| antimicrobial sense). For years, because the "spirochete is
| hiding, round bodies, etc etc". The agents used also make no
| antimicrobial sense - when we show the med history to ID
| specialists and PharmD's, they just roll their eyes...
|
| 2) As a resident, we had a couple of cases roll through the
| door of a) temporal lobe epilepsy with mesial temporal
| sclerosis, b) Parkinson's disease, both pretty clear diagnoses,
| told by various "chronic lyme specialists" that their symptoms
| were due to Lyme,taken off their meds and put on strange
| regimens of IV ceftriaxone (at out of pocket expense) and
| ending up hospitalized as a result. With such severity that
| efforts were made to have the state board revoke the medical
| licenses of these practitioners.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I don't doubt everything you're saying, and that unscrupulous
| physicians are genuinely taking advantage of their patients.
| However, as someone with a family member who was recently
| diagnosed with a (largely untreatable) autoimmune disease, I
| want to explain why patients become so desperate that they're
| willing to try anything. The basic problem here is that
| anyone who goes online and reads about their condition (eg
| PTLDS) will find ample scientific evidence that there's a
| real condition there -- however, a huge majority of medical
| practitioners aren't as caught up on the research as their
| desperate patients, and will often express skepticism that
| the condition even exists. (Note that this is different from
| acknowledging the condition is real and being unable to offer
| a treatment.) This destroys credibility in the conservative
| medical establishment, and makes it much easier for
| charlatans to make inroads, simply by acting like they
| believe the patient. My point here is that a little empathy
| can go a long way to protecting patients from this outcome.
| Adrig wrote:
| You're so right... I've been twice in "medical wandering"
| where doctors couldn't figure out what I had. First time
| was IBS years ago when the condition wasn't well known (2
| years of pain and loneliness before I knew what I had),
| second time was for lyme and I'm currently in PTLDS in the
| middle of the war between the 2 sides.
|
| I can't stress enough how angry I am at some doctors I met,
| that had so little empathy and so much ego. Not only their
| incompetence allowed my condition to worsen and make the
| recovery harder and longer, they made me question my sanity
| and lose hope without caring a little bit about how it
| would make me feel. If it wasn't for the support of my
| loved ones, it would have been the loneliness and despair
| that would have killed me.
|
| The only reason I haven't fallen into the "alternative
| medecine" world is because the ones I have met have been
| even more bullshit. But at least they cared (and for most,
| not in a predatory way. They genuinely wanted to help). No
| wonder so many people can fall into predatory practices
| when left alone like I was.
| stainforth wrote:
| Doctors are being empathetic when they restrain from
| pushing the nonsense quacks do, just to satisfy a patient's
| anxiety, no?
| jacobr1 wrote:
| In this case we aren't talking about the remedy, but
| rather the diagnosis.
|
| If the doctor doesn't even acknowledge the syndrome is
| "real" or even further implies it is psychosomatic, it
| may drive people away from the more rational
| establishment to the fringe. On the other hand,
| empathizing with the patient, catching up on the latest
| research, taking the time to explain it to the patient
| and their options, is time consuming and hard to do with
| billing constraints and electronic medical records TPS
| reports and such. Much easier (for this class of doctor)
| to dismiss it all as patient self-diagnosis of quackery
| and move on to the next patient.
|
| My mother has lupus and when she first started showing
| systems her (prior) GP dismissed them out of hand and
| point symptoms and then started to treat her as somewhat
| of a malingerer. Ironically, it was her acupuncturist
| that drove her to see a rheumatologist - who took the
| time to go through a variety of diagnostics (and
| recommendation to a new GP and other specialists) to
| identify the problem and a treatment that let her return
| to life with things in a more managed state.
| foobarian wrote:
| Out of curiosity how come you have such detailed familiarity
| with the topic? Sorry if may be a sensitive question but it
| seems a relatively obscure thing to randomly get into. And to
| be sure I really appreciate your posts.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| If you live somewhere that Lyme disease is prevalent (much of
| the eastern US) and spend any time doing outdoorsy stuff (or
| associate with people that do), it's hard not to be aware of
| Lyme disease. You'll also likely know people who have had it,
| and other people who have persistent symptoms after an
| infection.
| shmageggy wrote:
| Hundreds of thousands of people have been diagnosed with
| Lyme, so probably millions know someone who has. There are
| posters about ticks at nearly every trailhead I've visited in
| the northeast US in the past five years. It's not obscure.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Out of curiosity how come you have such detailed
| familiarity with the topic?
|
| I developed the typical Lyme symptoms after spending a lot of
| time outdoors in a Lyme area and removing ticks from myself
| several different times. I tested positive for Lyme under the
| relatively strict CDC criteria from a trusted laboratory. A
| 28-day course of Doxycycline changed something, but the
| fatigue and general malaise stuck around. I've spent the next
| decade consuming every bit of research I could find on the
| topic.
|
| I'd love as much as anyone for this already FDA-approved
| antibiotic like Azlocillin to be a miracle cure for my
| problems. I would gladly welcome properly structured RCTs.
| However, I've learned to be extremely skeptical of antibiotic
| therapies for Lyme. Patients who self identify as having
| "chronic Lyme" are notorious for holding strong beliefs that
| antibiotics improve their condition after reading about
| hidden spirochetes and undetectable infection theories for
| years, but double-blind studies show no benefit.
|
| I think the much more likely explanation is that Lyme can
| trigger long-lasting alterations in the body somewhere, even
| after the infection is eliminated.
|
| Sadly, the topic has become so political that mainstream
| researchers won't touch it. Now that "chronic Lyme" is so
| closely intertwined with the alternative medicine community,
| anyone who denies the persistent infection theory is treated
| as if they are denying the persistent symptoms of sufferers.
| That couldn't be farther from the truth for me, as I suffer
| the symptoms myself.
|
| The topic is so politically charged that I only use my
| pseudonymous alternate account for discussing it online. I've
| had chronic Lyme sufferers dox me and send vaguely
| threatening messages in the past, just for discussing the
| research online. It's no wonder that more researchers don't
| want to investigate Lyme disease.
| vimy wrote:
| Persistent Borrelia Infection in Patients with Ongoing Symptoms
| of Lyme Disease.
|
| >RESULTS: Motile spirochetes identified histopathologically as
| Borrelia were detected in culture specimens, and these
| spirochetes were genetically identified as Borreliaburgdorferi
| by three distinct polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based
| approaches. Spirochetes identified as Borrelia burgdorferi were
| cultured from the blood of seven subjects, from the genital
| secretions of ten subjects, and from a skin lesion of one
| subject. Cultures from control subjects without Lyme disease
| were negative for Borrelia using these methods
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29662016
|
| The CDC is wrong and negligent about persistent Lyme. Just like
| they are about the masks for covid-19.
|
| This is just one study demonstrating spirochetes surviving. I'm
| not gonna bother digging up the others, honestly not worth my
| time to try and convince one random person.
|
| Look up disulfiram and it's effects on Lyme patients. It's
| another drug discovered in the same way as this one.
| Miraculous.
| lymeeducator wrote:
| Lyme has three known forms of existence in mammals:
|
| 1) spirochete reproductive form and susceptible to a number
| of antibiotics (vitro/vivo) 2) round body "starvation forms"
| which are resistant to most antibiotics (vitro/vivo) 3)
| biofilm colonies which harbor many pathogens, metals and
| mycotoxins are resistant to antibiotics (think
| immunosuppression here)
|
| I've gone through a shit ton of tests in the last few years
| going over much of this. I have relatives that experienced it
| as well. There is growing scientific evidence a ton of
| clinical improvement, yet "anecdotal" patient evidence that
| many of these pathogens can persist beyond initial treatment.
| Buhner does an excellent job of explaining some of this in
| "Healing Lyme" and backs it up with studies from around the
| world. His protocols certainly help people (myself included).
|
| Immune expression and context is a tough nut to crack and we
| need billions of more data points capturing cytokine
| signaling in conjunction with T-cell, Nk cells, mast cells,
| antibodies, etc to get a better understanding of HOW UNIQUE
| EACH IMMUNE RESPONSE IS TO A PATHOGEN. Life on our planet is
| biological and tightly coupled with bacterial/parasitic/viral
| pathogens and would not exist without them. Things quickly
| change through reproduction or in the case of Borellia by
| shifting its outer protein to better evade compromised immune
| systems. Or has there just been one flu/corona/etc viral
| strain in the last hundred years? (<- No). These things have
| remained in existence for a long time, it is foolish to think
| they cannot adapt.
|
| Mind the 'gap' with disulfiram. It seems side effects vary,
| but also the quick elimination of Lyme, Babesia (not sure
| about Bartonella, which is mainly endothelial), and the
| cytokines cascades they trigger, but removing them all it
| once vs reducing them from severe to immune manageable levels
| might cause its own set of issues.
|
| I won't bring up the CDC as they've failed millions of Lymies
| at this point with poor test protocols and failure to push
| for more research data. Test skipping 31, 34 antibody
| proteins when they are primary Borellia proteins (if the body
| is able to produce them, immunocomprimised or the load from
| multiple infections). The single dose doxy is absolute
| bullshit (1 data point from me). The denial that ticks can
| transmit Borellia (Lyme) and Bartonella in the same bite
| (bullshit, many tick samples on both costs show something
| like 2.6 pathogen average). In my personal experience,
| Bartonella is an absolute bitch to get rid of.
|
| We need to better educate ourselves by owning all of our data
| in a way that enables us to submit it to research projects
| that are publically funded and not driven by patent revenue
| which pushes economies of scale. (off soapbox now :-)
| cpascal wrote:
| Buhner's book is wonderful. Extremely well researched.
| Anecdotally, (n=3) his evidence-backed protocol worked to
| treat my family and I after antibiotics did not work.
| stinos wrote:
| _I 'm not gonna bother digging up the others_
|
| You probably should though: this is HN, there are typcially
| quite some people with a background in academics here. Or
| just criticially thinking people in general who understand
| how science works on this planet. tldr; one single paper on a
| controversial subject isn't going to cut it as proof I'm
| afraid.
| araara wrote:
| Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge on the
| Internet. You might think you're convincing just one person,
| but you're educating hundreds more.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Persistent Borrelia Infection in Patients with Ongoing
| Symptoms of Lyme Disease.
|
| This paper is from Marianne J Middelveen, who is well known
| for embracing quackery and producing questionable papers.
|
| Her earlier claims that Lyme is a sexually transmitted
| disease were quickly dismissed, though not before generating
| a lot of noise in the media: https://www.aldf.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/12/Lyme-Borreli...
|
| She also writes papers about "Morgellons Disease", a
| delusional disorder in which patients believe threads and
| fibers from their clothing and other fabric are actually
| sprouting from within their skin. The condition is
| universally acknowledged as a delusional disorder, but MJ
| Middelveen treats it as a real disease with no real evidence.
|
| > I'm not gonna bother digging up the others, honestly not
| worth my time to try and convince one random person.
|
| This is my least favorite part of discussing Lyme online. So
| many people are deeply convinced of their chosen narrative
| that they unquestioningly accept any papers that support
| their claims, while refusing to acknowledge any evidence to
| the contrary. This has created quite the market for
| pseudoscientific researchers to peddle narratives and pseudo-
| research that meets the demand for what people want to hear.
|
| In the end, it only sets the field back. I would love to see
| a magic combination of antibiotics that reverse PTLDS
| symptoms, but decades of high-dose, extended duration
| antibiotic trials have provided zero benefit to patients,
| despite the demand.
| vimy wrote:
| >This paper is from Marianne J Middelveen, who is well
| known for embracing quackery and producing questionable
| papers.
|
| Let's ignore the research because we don't like the
| researcher. That's how science works.
|
| The gold standard in microbiology for diagnosing an
| infectious disease has always been to culture the organism
| alive. Despite notorious difficulties in culturing Borrelia
| burgdorferi, in about 30 studies this organism has been
| cultured alive from patients despite at least standard
| antibiotic therapy, and in many cases after antibiotics far
| in excess of what is deemed curative by IDSA and CDC. If
| the pathogen that causes a disease is still present in
| conjunction with symptoms compatible with that infection,
| it would appear to me that the fundamental questions about
| the cause of long term symptoms should have been answered a
| very long time ago. To add insult to injury, recent studies
| from Tulane, Johns Hopkins, and Northeastern University all
| demonstrate that we can't even kill Borrelia in the test
| tube with the currently recommended antibiotics. What are
| the chances that a second disease of mysterious etiology
| but with the same symptoms as the first disease, would come
| and replace the first disease when there is published
| evidence that the pathogen which causes the first disease
| persists despite both short and long-term antibiotics?
| There are numerous chronic bacterial infections which
| require long-term combination antibiotic therapies:
| Tuberculosis, leprosy, coxiella endcocarditis, brucellosis,
| Whipple's. Why should Lyme be different?
|
| >I would love to see a magic combination of antibiotics
| that reverse PTLDS symptoms, but decades of high-dose,
| extended duration antibiotic trials have provided zero
| benefit to patients, despite the demand.
|
| Let's take the PLEASE[0] study for example. Although
| significant improvement in health was measured (on average
| 4.6 points on the SF-36 scale; 3 points is considered
| significant progress) the results were presented with the
| headline: 'Long-term use of antibiotics does not benefit
| long-term complaints of Lyme'.
|
| While tens of thousands of patients have been cured by a
| cocktail of antibiotics taken for several months or
| sometimes years. This is also what the current in vitro
| research is showing. Lyme persisters can only be killed by
| a combination of antibiotics.[1] Like tuberculosis. And
| it's also what this data analysis of 200 patients shows.[2]
|
| >We collected data from an online survey of 200 of our
| patients, which evaluated the efficacy of dapsone
| (diaminodiphenyl sulfone, ie, DDS) combined with other
| antibiotics and agents that disrupt biofilms for the
| treatment of chronic Lyme disease/post-treatment Lyme
| disease syndrome (PTLDS). ... Conclusion DDS CT decreased
| eight major Lyme symptoms severity and improved treatment
| outcomes among patients with chronic Lyme disease/PTLDS and
| associated coinfections.
|
| And recently we have the spectacular results of
| Disulfiram.[3][4] A clinical trial is underway at Colombia
| University so we won't have official results until 2021 but
| all signs point to it being a game-changer. Lyme
| communities are full of people with miracle stories after
| taking Disulfiram. Why would Disulfiram work if the
| persistent Lyme hypothesis is wrong?
|
| [0]https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1505425
|
| [1]https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2019/three-
| antibiot...
|
| [2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6388746/
|
| [3]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31151194
|
| [4]https://www.lymedisease.org/disulfiram-kinderlehrer-2/
| hhas01 wrote:
| "This is my least favorite part of discussing Lyme online.
| So many people are deeply convinced of their chosen
| narrative that they unquestioningly accept any papers that
| support their claims, while refusing to acknowledge any
| evidence to the contrary. This has created quite the market
| for pseudoscientific researchers to peddle narratives and
| pseudo-research that meets the demand for what people want
| to hear."
|
| SCAM SOP. Because it's all about _Them_. Peddlers reap
| wealth and adulation; victims are miserable AF but
| "vindicated". Talk about mutual parasitosis.
| FranciscusG wrote:
| You're right about the quacks and the delusions. I have
| auto-immune issues after a Bb infection and after three
| years of high-dosed Doxycycline I still tested positive for
| IgM (active infection). Tested by a German state-accredited
| reference lab. I'm self employed and never asked for
| disability money, never kept going to doctors to try to
| solve the issue. I now have CFS and Rheumatoid Arthritis
| and when I stop taking Doxycycline (I try that all the
| time, I hate taking pills), I get severe neurological
| problems, such as incontinence and my breathing stops all
| the time and many other symptoms such as extreme
| tachycardia in rest, aggression etc. Something is wrong.
| Does Doxycycline manage my CNS inflammation or are there
| still spirochetes?
| djsumdog wrote:
| > Just like they are about the masks for covid-19
|
| What is the CDC saying about masks for covid-19? Are you
| saying they're not effective or the CDC is downplaying their
| effectiveness?
| wetpaws wrote:
| CDC plain saying they are not effective and not
| recommending them
| octodog wrote:
| Wrong. It's much more nuanced than that.
|
| Surgical masks are not effective at preventing infection.
| They are effective at spreading infection.
|
| New data on asymptomatic spreaders means than public
| health authorities are considering changing their advice.
| The default assumption would then be that everyone has
| it, and should therefore wear a mask to prevent spreading
| it.
| wetpaws wrote:
| >Surgical masks are not effective at preventing
| infection. They are effective at spreading infection.
|
| This is a common misconception, for which CDC is also
| partially the one to be blamed.
|
| Laboratory tests find that improvised cloth masks block
| 60 - 80% of virus particles
|
| Most experts in the early 2000s agreed that these masks
| were probably better than nothing.
|
| https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/5/4/e006577.full.
| pdf
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-
| core/c...
|
| http://akkie.mods.jp/2019-nCoV/images/c/c0/%E3%82%B5%E3%8
| 3%B...
| bregma wrote:
| > Laboratory tests find that improvised cloth masks block
| 60 - 80% of virus particles
|
| How many virus particles do you need to become infected?
| Is 20% of the load in a typical aerosol droplet from an
| asymptomatic infected person above or below that critical
| number?
| wetpaws wrote:
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS147
| 3-3...
|
| >higher viral loads associated with severe clinical
| outcomes
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| >Surgical masks are not effective at preventing
| infection.
|
| Actually, they very much are.
|
| 1. Regular old surgical masks (not N95 respirators), when
| worn by the public without training, had a strong
| protective effect for the people wearing them during the
| SARS-CoV-1 outbreak. They reduced the risk of infection
| by ~70%. (Source:
| https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/2/03-0730_article)
| The CDC even coauthored this one.
|
| 2. Despite being very different in their ability to
| actually filter out fine particles, N95 respirators and
| surgical masks actually show no significant difference in
| their ability to prevent diagnosed respiratory infections
| including influenza, when worn by healthcare workers
| according to two large meta-studies. Though both had a
| protective effect over no mask. (Source:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868605/)
| (2nd source:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779801/)
|
| 3. When infected people wear a mask, it does help reduce
| the amount of viral shedding which occurs, presumably
| making them less likely to infect others. (Source:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591312/)
|
| In fact, if you dig into the research evaluating
| different mask types including homemade masks, one of
| them suggests that the masks are actually MORE protective
| on the way in than they are in preventing shedding of
| aerosols: (Source:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440799/)
| (2nd source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258
| 525804_Testing_t...)
| voldacar wrote:
| Weeks ago the CDC lied, saying that masks aren't effective
| and that the general public shouldn't wear them. They did
| this ostensibly to keep the existing mask supply available
| only to medical workers. Needless to say, if they're
| ineffective for the general public, they're ineffective for
| doctors and nurses. And so people saw through the bullshit
| didibus wrote:
| I remember reading the CDC website, and I don't remember
| them saying that.
|
| Their Jan 8 publication says:
|
| > CDC currently recommends a cautious approach to
| symptomatic patients with a history of travel to Wuhan
| City. Such patients should be asked to wear a surgical
| mask as soon as they are identified and be evaluated in a
| private room with the door closed. Personnel entering the
| room to evaluate the patient should use contact
| precautions and wear an N95 disposable facepiece
| respirator
|
| - https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/HAN00424.asp
|
| And on Feb 21 their FAQ said:
|
| > Q: Does CDC recommend the use of facemask in the
| community to prevent COVID-19?
|
| > A: CDC does not recommend that people who are well wear
| a facemask to protect themselves from respiratory
| illnesses, including COVID-19. You should only wear a
| mask if a healthcare professional recommends it. A
| facemask should be used by people who have COVID-19 and
| are showing symptoms. This is to protect others from the
| risk of getting infected. The use of facemasks also is
| crucial for health workers and other people who are
| taking care of someone infected with COVID-19 in close
| settings (at home or in a health care facility).
|
| - https://wayback.archive-
| it.org/13529/20200221195555/https://...
|
| So I'm not seeing where they ever said they were not
| effective. It says that if you are sick or showing
| symptoms you should wear a mask, but that they don't
| advise the general public to wear a mask because they are
| crucial to health care workers. To me this sounds like
| very good advice.
| djmips wrote:
| Right but if you can't tell if you're infected then you
| should always wear a mask. I mean how much more
| additional trouble is that then making everyone stay
| home.
| ramshorns wrote:
| > _Needless to say, if they 're ineffective for the
| general public, they're ineffective for doctors and
| nurses._
|
| This isn't necessarily true. Doctors and nurses could
| have training on how to use masks, whereas most people
| will touch their faces more with them on.
| kaikai wrote:
| Not sure why this is getting downvoted. Wearing a mask
| correctly, in a way that gets a proper seal, is something
| health care pros are trained to do and most people
| aren't. If you're constantly touching the mask (which has
| been concentrating particles in the air) and then
| touching other parts of your face, the mask is less
| effective.
| Larrikin wrote:
| When you know touching your face is the worst thing you
| can do this has personally been a proven lie. I assume if
| there is science behind a study that tracks people
| through out the day and shows people touch their face
| more often, that they were not told to avoid touching
| their face. I think to touch an eye brow or my hair and
| my face subtly moves and I feel the mask on my face and
| realize that I should not come anywhere close to my face.
| People are not stupid, they just need to be educated.
| octodog wrote:
| This is seriously and dangerously wrong information.
|
| Surgical masks are particularly helpful in stopping
| _infected_ people from spreading the disease.
|
| New information and data on asymptomatic spreaders means
| that the CDC (and many other Western health authorities)
| are considering changing their advice. The idea is that
| everyone must assume they are an asymptomatic spreader.
|
| Additionally, surgical masks aren't the only PPE that
| medical workers use to protect themselves. Furthermore,
| hospitals and medical workers need surgical masks for
| many different non-coronavirus activities.
|
| See here for more
| info:https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2020/03/31/8245604...
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| No, what you just said is seriously wrong. The CDC even
| coauthored a paper that found during the SARS-1 outbreak
| that among contacts of known cases, those untrained
| people that regularly wore surgical masks had a 70%
| reduced risk of contracting SARS. 60% for those that wore
| them intermittently. And in fact, research suggests that
| masks are actually MORE protective for the people wearing
| them.
|
| Note the following points, with sources (The context is a
| bit off because I did this research in response to
| another question, but the points are still pretty much
| relevant here):
|
| 1. Regular old surgical masks (not N95 respirators), when
| worn by the public without training, had a strong
| protective effect for the people wearing them during the
| SARS-CoV-1 outbreak. They reduced the risk of infection
| by ~70%. (Source:
| https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/2/03-0730_article)
|
| 2. Despite being very different in their ability to
| actually filter out fine particles, N95 respirators and
| surgical masks actually show no significant difference in
| their ability to prevent diagnosed respiratory infections
| including influenza, when worn by healthcare workers
| according to two large meta-studies. Though both had a
| protective effect over no mask. (Source:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868605/)
| (2nd source:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779801/)
|
| 3. Improvised, homemade masks have only a marginally
| lower filtration efficiency than surgical masks (which we
| established are about as effective as an N95 respirator
| anyway). (Source:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440799/)
| (2nd source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258
| 525804_Testing_t...)
|
| 4. There is evidence in the studies linked in item 2 that
| hand hygiene alone did not demonstrate much of a
| protective effect (for civilians caring for a sick family
| member) against transmission of influenza compared to use
| of any type of mask.
|
| 5. When infected people wear a mask, it helps reduce the
| amount of viral shedding which occurs, presumably making
| them less likely to infect others. (Source:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591312/)
| fiter wrote:
| From your study on point 2: "Results of our systematic
| review and meta-analysis show that there was no
| significant difference between N95 respirators and
| surgical masks when used by health care workers to
| prevent transmission of acute respiratory infections from
| patients. However, wide 95% CIs from our meta-analysis
| must be interpreted as insufficient evidence to determine
| whether there is a clinically significant difference."
|
| What the study says is that we don't have enough
| information. As an example, one of the studies referenced
| in that study gives odds of 0.58 for getting infected
| with surgical and 0.42 with N95.
|
| Bonus quote: "Furthermore, we do not have an adequate
| understanding of the number, size and dispersion of the
| droplets that contain live, infectious particles produced
| by infected patients.56 A laboratory-based study reported
| data that humans infected with influenza rarely produce
| aerosols that contain infectious viral particles.57 In 2
| other laboratory studies, participants infected with
| influenza produced droplets containing viral RNA, but
| viral RNA could not be detected on manikin headforms or
| on filters of breathing manikins at distances as close as
| 0.1 m following participants breathing, counting,
| coughing or laughing.7"
| toomim wrote:
| Unfortunately, I think you are on the wrong side of the
| science on this one.
|
| First, you're implying that the data is new, but it's
| been around for a long time:
|
| https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HLrm0pqBN_5bdyysOeoOB
| X4p...
|
| > Surgical masks are particularly helpful in stopping
| _infected_ people from spreading the disease.
|
| One of the ways the CDC twisted the information was to
| pretend this is only about surgical masks. There are also
| N95 masks, but the advice from the CDC and Surgeon
| General was generalized to _all_ masks, not just surgical
| masks. Like this tweet: Seriously
| people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT
| effective in preventing general public from
| catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare
| providers can't get them to care for sick
| patients, it puts them and our communities at
| risk!
|
| Nothing in there distinguishes surgical from N95 masks,
| which really do block 95% of pathogens.
|
| Furthermore, even surgical masks block 60-80% of
| pathogens. And if you seal the sides with tape, they
| block as much as other respirators.
|
| And for the public, 60-80% is wayyyyy better than
| nothing!
|
| So although it's true that there is a shortage of
| medical-grade masks for healthcare workers, and it's true
| that we should give them priority for any masks we have,
| it's absolutely a lie to say that "masks" in general are
| not effective at stopping the virus for the public.
| voldacar wrote:
| Except they didn't specify surgical masks as opposed to
| N95.
| lone_post wrote:
| Did you ever consider that the CDC guidelines for masks were
| intended to prevent hoarding so that those treating patients
| on the front lines could access them?
| Vomzor wrote:
| They should have told the truth. "Mask help but we don't
| have enough of them. We need to reserve the few we have for
| doctors and nurses. People should use diy masks until we
| have more. It's not perfect but it will still help to
| flatten the curve."
| PHGamer wrote:
| right but everyone is out and about. while people in asian
| wore masks when they went grocery shppping. i get what they
| did but they screwed civilians for sure in the name of
| saving doctors. they actively lied about them being needed
| so one group would have a better chance. the truth is if
| you were going to have any contact with someone you needed
| a mask.
| loeg wrote:
| > i get what they did but they screwed civilians for sure
| in the name of saving doctors. they actively lied about
| them being needed so one group would have a better
| chance.
|
| Think a moment. The sick people need the doctors and
| nurses alive. Stripping the supply of PPE for medical
| professionals is lose-lose for everyone. Even if only all
| of the high-risk non-medical-workers bought effective
| masks, it would obliterate the supply available to nurses
| and doctors.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Think indeed.
|
| Lie once, lie always. Honesty is imperative for a public
| trust.
|
| Now, what do you think the crazy anti-vaxxers will say,
| next time they're told to trust the CDC, and other public
| bodies, and that vaccination is safe, and makes sense?
|
| When a vaccine is created, perhaps, for this virus?
|
| Now it is easier to convince others that the truth is
| concealed. That lies abound.
|
| Any medical official should lose their license, for
| spreading quackery.
| wetpaws wrote:
| Front line personel and hospitals should've been prepared
| months if not years in advance.
| jnbiche wrote:
| No, I think most of us realized that. It's still not OK for
| the CDC to lie to the public, regardless of motive. For a
| public health organization, the end doesn't justify the
| means.
|
| Even more concerning are the number of doctors I've seen
| blatantly lying about the effectiveness of masks. Most
| people aren't idiots - if the masks help protect medical
| professionals from Covid-19, they can also help non-medical
| professionals.
|
| The proper message would have been: masks can be effective,
| even a bandana can likely help prevent disease
| transmission. But it's important for Americans to save N95
| masks for medical professionals until they're widely
| available. Given that it's highly likely that wearing _any_
| mask helps prevent the spread of the virus by keeping the
| mask wearer from transmitting it to others, this is what
| they should have done.
| loeg wrote:
| > For a public health organization, the end doesn't
| justify the means.
|
| Why not? This is a classic trolley problem and throwing
| the switch is absolutely the correct answer.
| chidg wrote:
| It's not classic trolley problem, because there are no
| second order effects modeled in the trolley problem. In
| this case, there is a secondary effect which is that the
| public realises they've been lied to and loses trust in
| public health authorities, which is exactly what has
| happened. You can only do that a couple of times before
| the authority _has_ no authority.
| MaulingMonkey wrote:
| It is not even remotely a given that throwing the switch
| is the correct answer. The Czech Republic made masks
| mandatory, met that requirement by churning out a bunch
| of homemade masks, and have supposedly been quite
| successful in flattening their infection curve in doing
| so.
|
| Going forward, misinformation gives every anti-vaxxer,
| skeptic, conspiracy theorist, and snake oil peddling
| bullshitter more ammunition with which to displace
| effective medical treatment going forward. Even the well
| meaning general populace becomes skeptical. You know what
| this results in?
|
| Dead kids. Covid parties.
|
| Trust in government is already so fucking slow people are
| throwing _covid parties_. And now you 're suggesting that
| undermining that trust even more is _the obvious answer_?
| newsbinator wrote:
| This is different. A public health organization can only
| lie at large scale once before it loses the credibility
| that allows it to function in the first place.
|
| ... probably.
| wkearney99 wrote:
| For those of you casually tossing that around:
| https://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2020/03/25/the-trolley-
| and...
| DanBC wrote:
| A load of people in this thread are saying the CDC (and
| others) are lying about masks.
|
| For members of the public walking around a mask provides
| at best marginal benefit, and that's only if the wearer
| complies with a strict regime of donning and doffing
| protocols, and if it's combined with a full set of other
| PPE (disposable gowns, gloves, eye shields) and frequent
| handwashing.
|
| As soon as you drop any of those you're not just making
| the mask a bit less effective, you're probably increasing
| the risk over not wearing a mask at all.
|
| There are a few routes of transmission -
|
| fecal oral; fomites to hand and then to eyes, nose, or
| mouth; and droplets landing on your eyes or being
| breathed in.
|
| It's likely that in members of the public the main route
| is touching an infected surface and then touching your
| eyes, nose or mouth. Masks only help with breathing in
| droplets, and they only help if they're worn correctly.
| Incorrect mask wearing increases risk because masks feel
| weird and cause people to touch their face more often,
| and because masks give permission to people to go outside
| and mingle in crowds.
|
| There's not much research around whether members of the
| public can wear PPE correctly, but there's plenty of
| research around PPE and healthcare professionals. We know
| that qualified registered healthcare professionals who
| know the consequences of not wearing PPE correctly still
| struggle to do it all correctly.
|
| > Most people aren't idiots - if the masks help protect
| medical professionals from Covid-19, they can also help
| non-medical professionals.
|
| The difference is that healthcare professionals spend all
| day in close contact with symptomatic people and are more
| likely to come into contact with blood or fecal matter or
| sputum, and are more likely to be doing aerosol-
| generating procedures, so the baseline risk is much
| higher, so that marginal benefit turns into an actual
| benefit. But importantly they're not just wearing masks.
| They're wearing gowns and gloves and eye protection and
| they have access to water and soap and alcohol hand gels
| and infection control teams to train them on how to wear
| it correctly.
|
| Here's what HCPs are wearing. Are you honestly suggesting
| this for members of the public? https://twitter.com/QEGat
| eshead/status/1244208756600307712
|
| Here's a simple graphic for donning: https://twitter.com/
| agtruesdell/status/1245470479059767297?s...
|
| Here's a thread talking about donning, wearing, and
| doffing PPE. https://twitter.com/halletjulie/status/12454
| 09318775767042?s...
|
| This is not the CDC / WHO / etc lying, this is them
| talking about the science as they understand it. https://
| twitter.com/shinybluedress/status/124277978004452147...
|
| > even a bandana can likely help prevent disease
| transmission
|
| You're basing this on a small study carried out in a lab
| using research bacteria (not viruses) carried in a
| calibrated spray, that didn't include "people breathing
| through the mask". You've massively overstated those
| results.
| rendall wrote:
| A public entity, whose stated mission is to provide timely
| and accurate information to the public, actually lies to
| the public in order to influence some third-hand outcome,
| such as less hoarding: a net positive?
|
| I would argue no, not a net positive at all. To start,
| nearly everyone now distrusts the CDC (and WHO) to deliver
| accurate information.
| loeg wrote:
| That is not their mission, stated or otherwise. The
| repeated emphasis is on health and saving lives.
|
| > CDC works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety
| and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S.
| Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or
| acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate
| attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and
| citizens to do the same.
|
| > CDC increases the health security of our nation. As the
| nation's health protection agency, CDC saves lives and
| protects people from health threats. To accomplish our
| mission, CDC conducts critical science and provides
| health information that protects our nation against
| expensive and dangerous health threats, and responds when
| these arise.
|
| I think the same people who were inclined to distrust
| health organizations probably continue to do so, and the
| folks who were inclined to trust health organizations
| probably continue to do so as well.
| asdkjh345fd wrote:
| >The repeated emphasis is on health and saving lives.
|
| And they just killed thousands of people, potentially
| tens of thousands. They know, as we have known for
| decades, that even simple, home made, cloth masks provide
| a huge reduction in the spread of respiratory diseases.
|
| >I think the same people who were inclined to distrust
| health organizations probably continue to do so, and the
| folks who were inclined to trust health organizations
| probably continue to do so as well.
|
| Anecdotally, that does not seem to be the case. I don't
| know anyone who trusts the CDC or WHO now, and a bunch of
| people now think the WHO is a Chinese organization trying
| to deliberately kill Americans, and the CDC has been
| infiltrated and subverted by them. That seems like a
| major barrier to effectively preventing future epidemics.
| MaulingMonkey wrote:
| >> CDC conducts critical science and provides health
| information
|
| Lies undermine all of this. Lies undermine the means by
| which they accomplish their mission.
|
| > the folks who were inclined to trust health
| organizations probably continue to do so as well
|
| One point of ancedata: not all of us.
| torgoguys wrote:
| The linked study's lead author is Middelveen. Isn't she the
| one who tried to say Lyme is an STD a few years back? I know
| nothing about the linked study, haven't read it, but her
| sloppiness with scientific rigor makes me nervous about
| taking the abstract at face value...
| oblib wrote:
| This has no bearing on the tests of this new drug, but it's worth
| noting that the best prevention is getting ticks off of you
| quickly.
|
| I know this because I live in a very tick infested area (Ozark
| Mountains) and very few people who've grown up here in families
| that have lived here for generations get lyme disease. I don't
| personally know anyone who has.
|
| Since I was kid in the `60s, and long before that, parents here
| did "tick checks" every evening. After calling us in mom's would
| strips us little kids down naked and pick any off they found and
| demand the older kids do it themselves and it becomes a habit. So
| does being aware. I mean, I don't ignore it when I think I feel
| one on me and I'm always aware there might be.
|
| I'm 61 now and I've been bit more times than I can count, but I
| still make a point to do a tick check every evening.
|
| Check out this video I made a couple years ago. They can get
| thick here...
|
| https://youtu.be/TFVDv8swzxQ
| matsemann wrote:
| Not all ticks carry diseases, though. It depends on the area.
|
| Traditionally areas with lots of deers (at least in my
| country), but they are now revisiting the idea it being
| directly linked with the amount of deers.
| bregma wrote:
| I live in a tick-thick area. I get dozens of bites every year,
| and I know you don't feel them and they can get places you
| don't always check every day (in your ear canal, in the
| inguinal area, on the backs of your upper arms where you can't
| see in the mirror without doing extreme gymnastics). The
| beggars will ride in to the house on your clothes and bite you
| during the night.
|
| I'm diligent with checks but I've been infected with
| Borrelliosis. Had the rash, had the Doxycycline 100 mg BIDx21.
|
| Hate those guys.
| aidanfindlater wrote:
| As others have noted, there's little to no Lyme disease in the
| Ozarks currently (https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/maps.html).
| The other thing is removing the ticks daily; ticks need to be
| attached for usually around 36 hours before the Lyme bacteria
| move from the hindgut to the mouth, so if you're doing a daily
| tick check then you're good (from a Lyme disease perspective).
| dempedempe wrote:
| I also live in the Ozarks. Pretty sure that the ticks that bear
| Lyme disease bacteria are practically non-existent in the
| Ozarks. They're more relegated to the North East.
|
| Not to downplay the importance of tick checks and other
| prevention techniques.
| oblib wrote:
| One of my nearest neighbor's kids got it here. He had the
| classic "ring" around the bite and the tick was fairly well
| gorged and swollen when they pulled it off. So it's here. But
| that family moved here from Indiana so they didn't grow up
| with the tradition of daily tick checks like folks living in
| rural areas here do.
|
| But, damn, that map showing the incidents in the eastern
| States is sure impressive.
|
| It would be interesting to study the tradition of "tick
| checks" here and there to get an idea of how that might
| affect those numbers.
| ourlordcaffeine wrote:
| As a FYI, Slovenia is also a lyme disease hotspot. Do tick
| checks, wear long sleeve shirts and tuck trousers into your
| boots and your shirt into your trousers. Don't give the ticks
| any opportunity to crawl onto your skin.
| liopleurodon wrote:
| The midwest is pretty infested too. Especially parts of WI
| and MN
| alexhutcheson wrote:
| This is correct - you can confirm from the CDC charts here:
| https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/datasurveillance/maps-recent.html
|
| Note that cases are reported by state of residence, so even
| the handful of cases in Arkansas and Missouri are probably
| attributable to travel to the upper Midwest or Northeast.
|
| However, the Ozarks do have a high incidence of Rocky
| Mountain Spotted Fever, so you should still be careful about
| preventing tick bites and removing them ASAP:
| https://www.cdc.gov/rmsf/stats/index.html
| ericand wrote:
| "but for reasons that are unclear, the [traditional] antibiotics
| don't work for up to 20% of people with the tick-borne illness"
|
| This is very exciting for a group of people that have felt
| forgotten and ignored by the medical industry
| [deleted]
| jonathanjaeger wrote:
| When I got Lyme as a teenager I was very lucky to notice a bulls-
| eye pattern (which not everyone gets) and quickly get treatment,
| with no complications after. I wonder if this new drug, or any
| future drugs, that work for the 20% of the people that
| doxycycline doesn't help, will also help people who figured out
| they had Lyme very late after being infected.
| rzimmerman wrote:
| I had a similar experience. I had a tick bite on my ear and
| didn't think much about it. A week or two later I noticed a
| secondary bullseye rash on my leg. I am also very lucky that my
| mother knew what it was and I was treated quickly with no
| complications.
| dd36 wrote:
| Yes, those are the ones that most desperately need treatment.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| I heard a great interview with the author, Kris Newby, concerning
| her recent book, Bitten.
|
| I haven't read her book, but it sounded good, and she definitely
| knows what she's talking about.
|
| Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological
| Weapons, By Kris Newby.
| heelix wrote:
| As someone who is a very active camper (pre-zombie-apocalypses
| summers) a human vaccination would be wonderful. When our kid was
| bitten, she had the same textbook bulls eye pattern so it was
| easy to see a clue. They use to have one, but it was pulled off
| the market.
| James_Henry wrote:
| They're working on the new one: https://www.newsweek.com/lyme-
| disease-vaccine-valneva-fda-ap...
| wgjordan wrote:
| Currently in Phase 2 Clinical Development since Dec 2018,
| with interim data expected mid-2020 [1].
|
| [1] https://valneva.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/06/2018_12_17_VL...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Clincialtrials.gov tracking at
| https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03769194
| mc32 wrote:
| Yes definitely agree. With deer pop growth and climate change
| the ticks are found in most places now. It'd be nice to know
| that if bitten they'd be more of a nuisance than a threat to
| health.
| acheron wrote:
| There are still other tick-borne diseases. Let's see if we
| can treat alpha-gal allergy too.
| tenant wrote:
| Coming from a farming background I spent a lot of time in close
| contact with grass etc. No one I know of ever came down with
| something like this but now it's becoming increasingly common
| though not among farmers. I have a suspicion that a lot of the
| people who would have formerly complained of Fibromyalgia, or
| mercury allergy, or ME are now getting this.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Great news! Let's hope the FDA doesn't hold this up for years.
| James_Henry wrote:
| It's an FDA-approved drug. Doctors could potentially just
| prescribe it for off-label use.
| greenburger wrote:
| Let's hope the FDA does its job of ensuring it is safe and
| actually works as its proponents say. I'd rather they not give
| it 737 MAX style review.
| jseliger wrote:
| The issue is not "current practice" or "737 MAX," which is a
| false binary; the main issue is whether the FDA is optimally
| hitting the space between "safety" and "getting new drugs and
| treatments fast," and it appears that the FDA is overly
| conservative. See for example _Launching the Innovation
| Renaissance_ https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolutio
| n/2011/12/la...
| greenburger wrote:
| Not sure that I understand the argument. The FAA is also
| clearly not hitting optimal space between "safety" and
| "getting new planes flying fast". Sometimes it appears the
| FDA hasn't been conservative enough, see Vioxx and
| labelling/guidance around opioids.
| evanpw wrote:
| The difference is that preventing new planes from
| entering the market doesn't kill people.
| hhas01 wrote:
| But allowing unsafe planes onto the market will.
|
| Because this is not just about those people who are sick
| right now. It's about the many, many more who will be
| sick in future: useless or harmful treatments released to
| market will negatively impact _all of them_ too.
|
| So let's not lose perspective here. The FDA does not kill
| people. _Diseases_ kill people. It's the FDA's role to
| reduce that toll _over time_. For there is no problem
| that cannot be made still worse through addition of greed
| and histrionics.
|
| As per usual, follow the money to see who's championing
| lowered standards. Short-termism works fantastically for
| quarterly bonuses, not so much for delivering decades-
| long improvements in the healthcare that will affect your
| children and your grandchildren and your great-
| grandchildren too.
|
| https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/federal-right-to-try-
| over-a...
|
| --
|
| Oh, and it really shouldn't need repeating that the FDA
| _already provides_ early access to still experimental
| treatments, but I guess it does:
|
| https://www.fda.gov/news-events/public-health-
| focus/expanded...
|
| You might want to consider why those calling for the
| FDA's neutering commonly fail to point that little
| factoid out. Since, you know, they're wanting to help the
| patients n'all.
|
| --
|
| https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=medicine+wagon
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=frances+kelsey
| [deleted]
| mrfusion wrote:
| Has anyone tested hydroxychloroquine against Lyme disease?
| danielhlockard wrote:
| ah yes, the flavor of the month drug. What makes you think it'd
| work on Lyme.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Did we have any reason to think it would work on corona? (I
| really don't know)
| James_Henry wrote:
| Yes, it is an antiviral.
| wetpaws wrote:
| It also failed clinical trials for covid
| James_Henry wrote:
| Which trials has it failed? I've really only read through
| the French one and the one from Wuhan. There are plenty
| that are still ongoing, of course.
| hannob wrote:
| As far as I'm aware there has been only one small RCT
| overall on hydroxychlroquine from china and there it
| failed. All the other things that were cited in HCQs
| favor were essentially garbage.
|
| That's not to say it doesn't work. It was a small trial
| with issues. But right now it's the best evidence there
| is.
| wetpaws wrote:
| Zheijang study does not show any detectable effectiveness
|
| https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04261517
| James_Henry wrote:
| Thanks for the link.
|
| In case you are interested, here is a larger study from
| in Wuhan that showed lower time to recovery on
| hydroxychloroquine: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.11
| 01/2020.03.22.20040758v...
| hannob wrote:
| I wasn't aware of this one yet.
|
| Though... it seems it has plenty of issues as well, see
| the comments on pubpeer: https://pubpeer.com/publications
| /71E74AD5896DCF99981A47917DE...
|
| In the trials registry [1] this was registered as a three
| arm trial with 100 patients each, so 300 overall. Yet the
| paper mentions ony two groups with 31 patients each. That
| alone looks very dubious...
|
| [1] http://www.chictr.org.cn/showprojen.aspx?proj=48880
| James_Henry wrote:
| It's not necessarily dubious to change a protocol, but it
| is concerning that they didn't report on the changes
| along with their reasoning.
|
| It would make sense, if they couldn't get 300 research
| subjects, that there would be a change of protocol. Also,
| I think it could have been a good idea to switch from
| viral load and t cell recovery time to something more
| meaningful and quick to measure like TTCR and pulmonary
| condition, but again, they don't explain the change so
| for all we know the change was to get their names on a
| more exciting paper.
|
| I see no reason why they would drop the placebo either.
|
| We really do have to wait for the bigger and better
| trials.
| thomasmeeks wrote:
| It is an anti-parasitic and immune-regulation drug. Not
| really an antiviral. I guess the theory is that it'd
| regulate an immune over-response. But I don't think the
| science is m showing that to be true in this case.
| James_Henry wrote:
| Yes, it is an antimalarial. It also seems to be an
| antiviral, too.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8546725
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10
| 434...
| danielmg wrote:
| We still have no good evidence that is does work for SARS-
| CoV-2.
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| The author gave an interesting interview on the War Nerd podcast
| https://www.krisnewby.com/media/radio-war-nerd
| OliverJones wrote:
| COOL! I live in a tick-infested beach community in northeast
| Mass, USA. Maybe soon it won't be such a high-stakes deal for
| summer houseguests to inspect themselves carefully. One guest got
| the dreaded, but she was lucky: antibiotics dealt with it.
|
| Thanks docs!
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| So while the FDA has not approved it for this, it is an already
| approved drug and people can get it, one way or another. Pretty
| good news
| nyxtom wrote:
| This is neat, very curious about how this process has been
| scaled/automated:
|
| >>> This process entails acquiring "libraries" of thousands of
| known chemical compounds and drugs, then mixing Lyme bacteria
| with each in tiny wells to see which ones are best at killing the
| organisms. The best drug candidates were retested in larger
| culture dishes, then the safest of these were tested in vivo in
| seven mice.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| I come from Wisconsin and I've been bit by ticks so many times.
| If you don't deal with them you probably miss out on how tiny
| these little motherfuckers are. They look like freckles. That pic
| with the dime is the same one on my leg there.
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/vs4d1k8CGPekvPUC7
|
| Now imagine if it's not on your leg but in your hair. Yeah, good
| luck finding that. I think it's also relevant to say that the
| bullseye appears less than half the time that people get lyme,
| and it's not always a bullseye. I've had weird scaly white
| rashes, etc.
|
| My advice is go here and buy medicine so you don't have to bother
| with a doctor. https://fishmoxfishflex.com/collections/fish-
| antibiotics
|
| Sucks, but that's the life. Take care of yourself.
|
| edit: I highly recommend this video if you're interested in
| learning more about tick-bourne diseases in the midwest, Lyme is
| often just the name applied to a bunch of diseaes.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N9rx1Vqxbc
| cryptogoth wrote:
| To me, this is an interesting result for three reasons:
|
| 1) it appears to be effective against three main forms of the
| Borrelia spirochete: the normal corkscrew shape, the round-body
| cyst, and biofilm (they don't call it by that name, but say
| "drug-tolerant persisters" whose meaning I'm inferring from rest
| of the literature).
|
| 2) it was approved to be tested in mice, which is a step on the
| way to human clinical trials. Other results, such as the active
| compound in honeybee venom, melittin, were only tested "ex vivo"
| on pigskin at body temperature.
|
| 3) it has the potential to work as quickly as antibiotics, and
| not 9 months to 2 years as many plant-based protocols take.
| Potentially without killing human gut flora.
|
| There is anecdotal evidence of PTLDS patients who are skilled
| with phlebotomy being able to culture lyme bacteria from their
| blood samples after letting them sit for a day or two, something
| that no conventional blood lab has time to do.
|
| Self-directed guide to blood microscopy to identify lyme borrelia
| (unverified by me):
| https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=37...
|
| Videos of spirochetes emerging from red blood cells (unverified
| by me), please excuse funky beats. This one is a little too
| horrifying for me to watch, as the bacteria is super creepy-
| looking. https://howirecovered.com/lyme-disease-under-the-
| microscope/
|
| Unfortunately, the lack of peer-reviewed results to verify this
| could mean either this method is not reliably reproducible, or
| there is no funding / appropriately prestigious or profitable way
| to pursue this line of research.
|
| It's a question I'm interested in, and would help fund as a
| citizen scientist. Even without a proposed treatment, the
| methodology of reliably detecting Lyme borrelia in blood could
| itself be patented.
|
| I'm very grateful this kind of research continues!
| fludlight wrote:
| Re: #1
|
| I think you missed the caption on the black and green picture:
|
| > This image shows how the Lyme bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi,
| form protective round body "persisters" when threatened by
| defensive immune system biochemicals in blood serum.
|
| Re: #2
|
| You don't need approvals to test in mice.
|
| Re: #3
|
| Antibiotics kill/greatly-diminish gut flora. Azlocillin is an
| antibiotic related to penicillin.
|
| The other promising drug mentioned, disulfiram, is nothing to
| be trifled with, either:
|
| https://www.drugs.com/mtm/disulfiram.html
|
| https://www.drugs.com/sfx/disulfiram-side-effects.html
| deesep wrote:
| The roots of the plant Cryptolepis, also known as yellow-dye
| root, was found to be very effective against Lyme disease. So was
| the the Japanese Knotweed:
| https://blog.frontiersin.org/2020/02/21/ethnobotanical-medic...
|
| Cryptolepis contains quinine and used by some tribes in West
| Africa to treat malaria.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Well shit, wrong disease right now.
| mtremsal wrote:
| Because of lockdowns? I find some comic relief in concurrent
| studies on "Corona and Lyme".
| rb808 wrote:
| I can't go out of my apartment because of the virus and can't
| hang out in the forest because of the bacteria in ticks. What
| century is this?
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(page generated 2020-04-03 23:01 UTC)