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The cell division time of Bb is very long compared to other bacteria.

A typical cell wall reproduction time for Streptococcus or Staphylococcus is less than 20 minutes, while the total reproduction time of Bb is from 12-24 hours.

Most antibiotics inhibit the formation of cell
walls and are effective only when the bacteria are dividing
with the formation of new cell wall.

With the slow replication time of Bb, an antibiotic would have to be present 24 hours a day for one year and six months to be present during the cell wall reproduction period.

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My understanding is this...

If strep or staph reproduces in less than 20 minutes (1/3 hour) and takes, let's say, 10 days for treatment to get it all.

Then Lyme with a cycle of 12-24 hours would take a very long time to make sure you hit it while it's dividing and creating new cell wall.


Around 37 times longer for the 12 hour scenario.
37 x 10 days = 370 days (just over a year)

Double it, for 24 hours, and you've got 2 years.

So an estimate of 1 1/2 years sounds about right to me.


Somebody, please correct me if I'm understanding this wrong. Math was my strong suit once, can't say it is now.


Sorry, if I've created more confusion and set mathmatics back a million years.

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1) Strep or staph reproduces every 20 minutes or 3 times and hour.

2) You have 3 chances to kill these infections every hour.

3) You have (3x24 =) 72 chances to kill them every day.

4) You take antibiotics for 10 days.

5) The antibiotics have (72x10 =) 720 chances to kill the infection.

What is missing here is WHY the magic number of 720? Why ten days?
If we assume this 10 day structure of curing will work with Bb then:


1) Bb reproduces every 12-24 hours. Let us use the 24 hour example first.

2) You have 1 chance to kill Bb every day (as opposed to 72 above)

3) To maintain the 720 chances to kill the bacteria (what is needed for bacterial infections killed in a course of 10 day ABX) you would need 720 days (2years)

4) If you use the 12 hour rule, then you have 2 chances every day to kill the bacteria.

5) You would need 360 days (1 yr) to have 720 chances to kill Bb.

6) The 1 and 1/2 year time is an average of the two above times.

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Does anyone want to comment on this, have an understanding of why we use a theory that is rigid in it's number 720 possible times to kill any bacteria?

What is missing here is WHY the magic # of 720 times to kill Bb?


Does anyone know this?

Does this help any one understand as it did me?

[ 28. February 2006, 02:18 PM: Message edited by: trails ]
 

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Posted by klutzo (Member # 5701) on :
 
Math was and is my weakest area, so I will just stick with anecdotal evidence.
I've had this a long, long time (over 20 yrs.).

Just about everyone seems to need at least 18 mos. of ABX of some kind (I include herbal ABX, since that is what I take).

That does seem to be the magic number, from what I've observed.

Relapses after that seem to be more common than not, but short and less severe, as long as the 18 months of tx was done concurrently.

Not scientific....sorry.
Klutzo
 

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Posted by trueblue (Member # 7348) on :
 
trails ~

It's a very rough estimate based on how long it would take (given the lifespan of the keet versus how we treat other bacteria that reproduce faster).

We could have used 19 minutes, as it said less than 20 and that would change the 720.


I could be mistaken, and likely am, but my understanding of ABX use is to treat long enough to get it all.

If we're given 10-14 days to fight off Strep then I'm pretty sure the feeling is that's longer than necessary, for good measure.

Which brings us to back to the reasoning for long term treatment for Lyme. The reproductive cycle is important as is the ability of the bacteria to change and hide.


All that said, I was greatly improved after 18 months of treatment, it felt like a magic number and magic time to feel 85-90% well.

I think if we'd known about co-infections in those days and I didn't have a car accident I could have been somewhere else entirely, right now.


I should shut up because I'm really talking out of my tush.
 

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Posted by robi (Member # 5547) on :
 
ya know .......... we are spposed to keep our stress levels down. Should we be doing math?

robi
 

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Posted by Areneli (Member # 6740) on :
 
I have already read something simillar regarding Lyme time of treatment before. Very simillar.
 

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Posted by siggy (Member # 8654) on :
 
Hi Trails! Good job on the maths here! It is good to get my brain do some workout!

I suppose the mystery of the magic 10 days / 720 possible hits should be solved before one can really understand this.

Anyway, the math made good sence to me. Finally!
 

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Posted by Lymetoo (Member # 743) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by robi:
ya know .......... we are spposed to keep our stress levels down. Should we be doing math?

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Posted by trueblue (Member # 7348) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Lymetoo:

quote:

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Originally posted by robi:
ya know .......... we are spposed to keep our stress levels down. Should we be doing math?

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ditto!
 

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Posted by trails (Member # 1620) on :
 
Yes Cave, that is where I am hung up.

I don't understand the SCIENCE behind the magic "it takes 720 times of exposure to kill bacteria."

I dont know where we get that number from and why it seems to work with other bacteria and from what a lot of folks are posting...why it works with Lyme too.

If you need 720 times to HIT the Spirochete, you'll need an average of 18 months of coninuous ABX.


I agree that the chetes are NOT reading text books, although I swear mine are smarter than I am, but they do seem to follow SOME sort of model (SOMETIMES) about their replication/death/destrcution/etc.

I think I ought to meditate on the number 720.

It isnt prime.....

PS--I hate math which is why I married a mathematician. MUCH easier on my brain...
 

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Posted by hiker53 (Member # 6046) on :
 
Math aside--How many of you have done continuous antibiotics for 18 months and are cured? Hiker
 

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Posted by trueblue (Member # 7348) on :
 

 

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Posted by Corgilla (Member # 4066) on :
 
Hi,

I copied this from somewhere on the net. It uses 500 cycles as the magic number.

I think they get the numbers from the fact that Strep is cured within 10 days. Depending on what you consider to be the reproduction rate of the Strep bacteria, you come up with a number based on that 10 day period.

I can't remember where the quote is from but here it is:

"Our treatment approach is designed for a Bb organism that is recognized as polymorphic and microaerophilic.

Other important features of Bb biological traits are the capacity to exist in either an intracellular or extracellular state.

Finally, Bb has a tendency for latency and for slow replication (125), a fact that has profound implications of the length of antibiotic therapy required for eradication.

The replication rate for Bb has been reported to be between 7 to 33 hours (126), depending on the environment used for culture and so forth.

In contrast, Group A Streptococcus, for example, replicates every 20 to 30 minutes.

Current standards of treatment for streptococcal infections is 10 days, or around 500 reproductive cycles.

Given these reproductive dynamics, and realizing this is indeed a crude but interesting analogy, treatment of Bb for 500 cycles could entail more than two years of therapy."

This is also provided that the blood level of antibiotic is constantly high enough to kill during every cycle. That's a really long time to be perfect with antibiotic dosing.

On top of that, you've got the blebs, cell wall deficient and intracellular forms to contend with.

It's no wonder we need long term treatment.

Hope this helps,

Corgilla
 

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Posted by siggy (Member # 8654) on :
 
I just came over this post at another lyme-net. It explains very good how abx works etc.

VERY IMPORTANT INFO TO GIVE TO YOUR DOCTORS!!

Written by Tom Grier for another discussion group and posted here with his
permission.

Gillx

*******************************************************************

Back in the 1940s when Penicillin just became commercially available after
WW II, scientists were trying to develop ways to determine how long to treat
bacterial infections. Since Penicillin was the first really big super star of
ABX they looked at the mechanism of action.

Cell wall agents like Penicillins insert faulty cell wall components into
bacteria when the bacteria divide and create a new cell wall. The bacteria then
collapses under osmotic pressure and ruptures and dies.

The bacteria is only vulnerable when it divides so streptococcus are
vulnerable for a few minutes every 20 minutes but Bb is vulnerable for a few
minutes every 24 hours.

Since all of the the Strep bacteria will try to divide
within a 10 day period of time, it is almost a certainty that all the Strep will
be exposed to a lethal dose of Penicillin over the 10 day period of time.

(Since
the bacteria are not synchronized to divide simultaneously they will divide when
ever they are able, but fast dividers will almost certainly not remain dormant
for longer than 10 days)

Borrelia like other spirochetes may take 24 hours or longer to divide and some
of the bacteria may remain dormant for weeks or months.

These metabolically
inactive bacteria cannot be killed by Penicillin until they divide.

In the 1950s! the scientists devised a formula to calculate treatment time.

The longer a bacteria took on average in a lab to double it's numbers, then
the longer treatment would have to be.

Bacteria that took 20 minutes needed 7-10 days of therapy
Bacteria that had doubling times of an hour needed 21 days
Tuberculosis at 12 hours needed 6 months of antibiotics or more
Following this formula Borrelia in general would need 1 1/2 years to expose
the bacteria to the same lethal doses of drug if you just looked at the total
overall exposure to the drug during new cell wall synthesis.

The formula was a general guideline but it tells us several things:

1) Slow dividing bacteria take longer exposures to antibiotics to kill all of
the bacteria in the host

2) Non metabolically active bacteria (Dormant bacteria) cannot be killed until
they become metabolically active and transport the antibiotic across their
membranes and the bacteria's ribosomes are impaired.

3) Not all the bacteria divide together so length of treatment must account
for bacteria that take longer to divide. (Bacteria in areas of poor nutrition or
hostile areas may shut down their reproduction to conserve energy)

I hope that helps? There are no tests to know when to stop treatment and no
tests to know how long of treatment is necessary.

In Dr Musher's study of
Syphilis, a high percentage of tertiary patients thought to be cured were found
decades later to still be infected but the Treponemes remained dormant in the
CNS until the patients got AIDS.

A sobering lesson about spirochetes!
TOM Grier

Another unique feature to Borrelia burgdorferi are Blebs.
This bacteria replicates specific genes, and inserts them into its own cell
wall, and then pinches off that part of its cell membrane, and sends the Bleb
into the host.

Why it does this we don't know. But we do know that these blebs
can irritate our immune system.

Dr. Claude Garon of Rocky Mountain Laboratories
has shown that there is a precise mechanism that regulates the ratio of the
different types of blebs that are shed. (46) In other bacteria the appearance of
blebs often means the bacteria can share genetic information between themselves.

We don't know if this is possible with Borrelia species. There have been reports
of a granular form of Borrelia, which can grow to full size, fully autonomous
spirochetes and can reproduce.

These granules are so small that they can be
filtered and separated from live adult spirochetes by means of a micro-pore
filter.

The granular/spore form of Borrelia burgdorferi is still being debated.
(Stealth Pathogens Lida Mattman Ph.
D 66, Phillips/Mattman 98, Preac-Mursic)
 

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