Very interesting- can't wait to hear what antibiotics they (he) recommends after his work is completed.
I saw today the FDA approved a new IV drug for MRSA- sounds like this scientist was involved in this--
Posted by miyamotoi (Member # 41833) on :
Kim Lewis and his team at Northeastern rediscovered what are called bacterial persisters. They were first discovered in the 40's and forgotten. This new work as applied to Borrelia by the Lewis team was recently funded by the Lyme Research Alliance (LDA) which also recently merged with the Tick-Borne Disease Alliance (TBDA). They are funding some of the best research that has real potential to help chronic Lyme suffers.
and the Kim Lewis team work may be one of the most hopeful lines of research that could actually help based on his MRSA success.
If you listen to Kim Lewis's discussion of persisters on the video here, you will understand the idea and that he is a special person with the right kind of open mind.
He discusses that some bacteria ALWAYS leave these persisters after antibiotic treatment and is a prominent cause of chronic infections.
So the LDA funded his team to look at Borrelia to ask the question whether Borrelia has persisters that would NEVER be killed by any of the current antibiotics. If this is true and these persisters are also are able to find places priveledged from the immune system, it would be a possible explanation of chronic Lyme and open the door to a cure.
Last month at the American Society for Microbiology 2014 meeting, one of Kim Lewis's team members reported Borrelia DOES have persisters in vitro proving Borrelia DO have this survival mechanism.
Persisters survive antibiotics because they become dormant yet are normal Borrelia and not mutants as seen in typical antibiotic resistance.
Since all antibiotics work by interfering with cell division somehow, a normal dormant Borrelia will always survive any ammount of any typical antibiotics.
Kim Lewis's team fame came from discovering MSRA becomes chronic not due to resistance as thought by everyone but due to persisters. So he found a drug that could kick the persisters out of dormancy such that this drug plus a normal antibiotic cured the MRSA. This was a big deal as reported in the presitigious journal Nature.
So now under LDA funding, they are searching for a similar drug that can kick Borrelia out of persister dormancy which could lead to a real cure. If his team can find a drug that does this, it could change everthing and force the IDSA to listen since his MRSA and other similar work are highly respected. This is research really worth watching and supporting.
This is pretty encouraging. What about Co-infections?
Posted by miyamotoi (Member # 41833) on :
"This is pretty encouraging. What about Co-infections?"
The principle applies to any bacterial infection. Its marvelous that the LDA was smart enough to ask Kim Lewis to see if this mechanism he has championed could underlie chronic Lyme first since that's their first priority.
There are a large number of co-infections and as yet few have risen to the level of getting this kind of attention. Some of the prominent co-infections like Babesia are not bacterial so its not even known if persisters apply.
The way I look at this is that a researcher who has no bias one way or another with Lyme who has gotten support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, over $6M in NIH grants in this area has now turned his teams attention toward the root of both the medical and controversy problems.
Prior to his applying the persister theory to MRSA and a few other chronic infections with success and good OBVIOUS science, the IDSA, NIH and CDC held it as sacred that resistance was ONLY due to evolutionary pressures and mutants that evaded antibiotic mechanisms.
The MRSA discovery turned many beliefs on its head and now many realize this is an important mechanism. This opens the door to changing beliefs with regard to chronic Lyme if the persister mechanism is seen and accepted. The discovery of a drug that knocks out persisters in Borrelia would be a home run with the bases loaded.
So this has a real potential of changing everything. Before co-infections will get the attention they deserve, there needs to be the overturning of certain beliefs and directions at the CDC and within the IDSA. If Kim Lewis and his team succeed with Lyme and change views Lyme can be chronic, it will open the door to far more interest in research for all tick borne infections in my humble opinion.
So again, lets root for them. You don't get the Bill an Melinda Gates Foundation attention easily and one research team getting over $6M from the NIH means the results will be taken seriously. That's the kind of hope and good smart science that is needed.
Posted by BobG (Member # 39642) on :
Great post! Thanks miyamotoi. Yes, you are right, BMGF does not just give it away. They run it like a business. I have been there twice.
Huskies getting it done while CDC and IDSA just sit on their rears for decades!!
Posted by TF (Member # 14183) on :
I watched the video on persisters. These are a small minority of a certain bacteria that can survive antibiotics that are able to kill all of the other bacteria except these rare persisters.
Then, he says that metronidazole (flagyl) is able to kill persister cells of certain bacteria.
So, it sounds just like what Burrascano has been saying. Lyme has a cyst form that is not killed by the antibiotics that kill the spirochete form. But, flagyl will kill the cyst form because it operates in an entirely different way.
So, the video is saying that all chronic diseases have these persister cells (or cyst forms) that are able to survive antibiotics, but flagyl kills certain persisters--the anaerobic kind, is what he may have said.
He even says that these persister cells have the ability to shut down their cell processes. They become dormant, in other words. That is how they survive an attack by an antibiotic that normally kills that kind of bacteria.
So, to me, he is just rediscovering what Burrascano has always said--that you need to use two antibiotics simultaneously to kill lyme. One that kills the standard form (spirochete) and one that kills the cyst form (called here a "persister cell.")
Only he hasn't mentioned lyme disease yet. He is finding the persister cells in various chronic diseases that we are unable to cure so far in the West.
Once medicine agrees that all of the chronic diseases have these cyst (persister) forms, then they will look for the med that can kill them. Then, they will treat these chronic infections with 2 meds and the infection will be eradicated.
That is the message I got from this video.
I hope that people pay attention to this message. Then, maybe they will have to agree that chronic lyme exists.
And, here is Burrascano so far ahead of them all. He already discovered the cure (when it comes to lyme disease at least)!
Posted by yanivnaced (Member # 13212) on :
he mentions metronidazole as the answer to kill off persister cells. Then why hasn't Flagyl or Tindamax cured anybody of Lyme? Seems like there's more to our disease than his findings for other simpler infections.
Posted by TF (Member # 14183) on :
Amoxicillin (with probinecid) plus flagyl cured me of lyme disease. I took dosages as recommended by Burrasacano.
If people are not cured with this protocol, perhaps the dosage was insufficent or the time spent treating was insufficient, or the immune system was not properly strengthened, or the coinfections were not treated, etc. etc. etc.
All of these issues were addressed in my treatment.
The flagyl kills the persister cells (the lyme cysts) and the amoxi kills the spirochete form. Have to have both.
Posted by miyamotoi (Member # 41833) on :
The video was made before Lewis began his work on Lyme funded recently by LDA. So the video doesn't mention Lyme as its only explaining how Lewis sees persisters as being one important mechanism for chronic infections. That is probably why the LRA funded his work.
The mention of metronidazole is not that they have determined it to kill Borrelia persisters but that it is a prodrug that gets converted inside the target bacteria even if its dormant into an active compound. So it's a model of an antibiotic for killing persisters that is very different from classic antibiotics.
This is because metronidazole is one of only a few antibiotics that don't act by directly blocking some aspect of bacterial cell division.
So in searching for drugs that might work on Borrelia persisters, metronidazole's prodrug mechanism is a useful model to use as a basis for the search. This prodrug approach means it doesn't become active until converted inside the target bacteria which is completely different from the antibiotics we all know.
So right now, the drug discovery and persister group at Northeastern are being funded by the LRA to to find a prodrug like in the metronidazole model that is converted into an active drug when it gets inside Borrelia.
This is an entirely different mechanism than any of the many antibiotics currently in use. This is why metronidazole or tinizadole cannot cure Lyme but their mechanism might be the key.
Persisters and Cysts are not the same forms seen by researchers. Persisters are actually morphologically identical to Borrelia spirochetes other than their metabolisms are on hold like an animal in hibernation. They are capable of having their metabolisms turned back on and become normal spirochetes.
When they revert and turn on their metabolisms, they are susceptible to typical antibiotics. But not all of them revert so some stay in hiding for later. They can hide in biofilms or anywhere protected from the immune system. So unless a drug is found that can kill them while dormant, the chronic infection cannot be killed by antibiotics.
A researcher needs some serious moxy to be funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They do very serious do-diligence and only work with the top people on serious problems. This is a good thing.
Posted by surprise (Member # 34987) on :
Thank you very much for this information.
Posted by Kudzuslipper (Member # 31915) on :
Great news. Thank you for both the links and your explanations. Very helpful.