What's the current thinking about whether Bb crosses the blood-brain barrier?
I may be facing brain surgery, so I want to read up on relevant matters. Thanks.
Posted by joalo (Member # 12752) on :
Buried on page two.
Posted by steve1906 (Member # 16206) on :
1- What is Bb?
Posted by Geneal (Member # 10375) on :
No doubt that Lyme and company can cause white matter lesions on your brain.
Bb is Lyme....just the technical term shortened.
If you don't mind me asking.....brain surgery?
My prayers for you.
Hugs,
Geneal
Posted by nenet (Member # 13174) on :
Yes, Lyme easily passes the blood-brain barrier. It is extremely agile and tiny, and is able to corkscrew with its unique flagella through muscles, cartilage, ligaments, joints, and possibly even bones. In fact it much prefers to move through and hang out in dense or collagen-rich tissue than the bloodstream.
If you are looking for scientific and medical articles about this, just do a search for CNS or brain and borrelia on pubmed or google scholar, and you will find hundreds of articles referencing early CNS involvement (central nervous system, which includes the brain) in Lyme infections.
Here's one to start you off:
"Borrelia burgdorferi in the Central Nervous System: Experimental and Clinical Evidence for Early Invasion" http://www.jstor.org/pss/30129579
(for steve or anyone interested:)
As mentioned above, Bb is Lyme, or Borrelia burgdorferi.
There are several strains of Borrelia that can cause Lyme disease in humans, but Bb is the most studied one, and the one that is always tested for by labs and docs that aren't more aware.
Just as an aside, Igenex is currently the only lab that tests for 2 species of human Lyme Disease-causing Borrelia, Bb31 and Borrelia lonestari, if I recall correctly.
Here is a GREAT link that provides information on many of the species and strains of Borrelia that have been discovered, including the human Lyme Disease-causing species and strains currently known about (not sure how up-to-date it is now - I don't see Borrelia lonestari listed):
Department of Pediatrics, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Park Building, Room 256, 600 North Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21287, USA. [email protected]
Erratum in:
* Infect Immun. 2005 Apr;73(4):2569.
Neurological manifestations of Lyme disease in humans are attributed in part to penetration of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and invasion of the central nervous system (CNS) by Borrelia burgdorferi.
However, how the spirochetes cross the BBB remains an unresolved issue.
We examined the traversal of B. burgdorferi across the human BBB and systemic endothelial cell barriers using in vitro model systems constructed of human brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMEC) and EA.hy 926, a human umbilical vein endothelial cell (HUVEC) line grown on Costar Transwell inserts.
These studies showed that B. burgdorferi differentially crosses human BMEC and HUVEC and that the human BMEC form a barrier to traversal.
During the transmigration by the spirochetes, it was found that the integrity of the endothelial cell monolayers was maintained, as assessed by transendothelial electrical resistance measurements at the end of the experimental period, and that B. burgdorferi appeared to bind human BMEC by their tips near or at cell borders, suggesting a paracellular route of transmigration.
Importantly, traversal of B. burgdorferi across human BMEC induces the expression of plasminogen activators, plasminogen activator receptors, and matrix metalloproteinases.
Thus, the fibrinolytic system linked by an activation cascade may lead to focal and transient degradation of tight junction proteins that allows B. burgdorferi to invade the CNS.
PMID: 15664945 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Posted by dguy (Member # 8979) on :
Thanks for the replies.
I don't sense any changes in cognition that I can attribute to lyme. Of course, I might be the last to know! :-)
Therefore my thinking is Bb has not gotten into my brain, perhaps the blood-brain barrier has stopped it.
But if I need brain surgery (suspected tumor) if Bb was not present before, the surgery will breach the barrier, which means Bb will have a path in.
Perhaps if the surgeons were lyme-literate something could be done to guard against that possibility. I suspect non-lyme-literate surgeons would simply blow off my concerns.