posted
Wondering if anyone found this article in Lab Investigation titled, "Spinal cord involvement in the nonhuman primate model of Lyme Disease". Just curious as to those with neuroborreliosis thought of their findings. The link is:
Michelle M
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 7200
posted
It's interesting.
Interesting to read about numbers of spirochetes, something I've always been idly curious about.
In immunocompromised animals (some animals kept permanently on steroids to ensure infection), spirochetes numbered in the millions.
Interesting that even though all animals were surely infected, only about half of them were positive by ELISA.
Rarely were spirochetes in spinal cord but frequently in meninges of brain and nerve roots of spine.
I think the longest post-infection time until they euthanized the animals to autopsy them was 4 months. Would have been interesting to see that doubled or tripled.
A good find, thanks for posting!
Michelle
Posts: 3193 | From Northern California | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
They also used needle innoculation, which some think is not a perfect model for natural conditions of vector transfer because the tick saliva is believed to improve the transfer and infection process. Have been articles published on this.
Editing to say (after reading the article) that more were needle-innoculated,but some were tick innoculated, so it was a mixed bag. And the group size was small.
But it is good that they do this kind of research. Would have to suspect that having multiple tickborne infections can also cause immunosuppression. Babesia is known to be immunosuppressive. So, the fact that they couldn't infect the animals unless they were given steroids to immunosuppress, cannot be extrapolated to human population. Also, they looked only for spirochetes of the traditional form; no mention of pleomorphic forms. Wondering how cysts, etc might change the picture of what they found in the nervous system.
[ 06. January 2007, 09:41 AM: Message edited by: lou ]
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