A selective antibiotic for Lyme disease, Leimer et al. 2021

Merged thread
For the abstract of the paper and a link to it, see this post.



The discovery that a chemical is deadly to the bacterium that causes Lyme disease but harmless to animals might allow the disease to be eradicated in the wild.

“Lyme disease is well-positioned to be eradicated,” says Kim Lewis at Northeastern University in Boston. “We are gearing up, the first field trial will be next summer.”

Lyme disease is caused by a bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi that lurks in wild mice. Ticks that feed on the mice become infected and can infect other animals, including people.


The disease is a growing problem in North America, Europe and Asia. It initially causes a characteristic “bullseye” rash and a flu-like illness. If untreated, it can lead to serious long-term problems, such as Lyme arthritis.



Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/articl...-could-lead-to-its-eradication/#ixzz78mv4oEle

 

Some things that struck me, it's apparently very specific to spyrochetes and doesn't do anything to anything else. Lyme bacteria can't mount a defense against it because of the way it enters cells. Because it resembles essential nutrients the bacteria needs to mop it up apparently, to use the scientific term. The scientists involved were able to ramp up the dosage enormously without it affecting the mice in a bad way.

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)01058-8

That seems to be the original paper.

 

Thanks for posting this.
Eradication would be grand

 

here in the UK to my recollection the spread of lyme disease is from dear ticks ?

 

Wow.

I'm actually crying now.

This would be amazing.

Thank you @Solstice for posting both those sources.

 

There's an article in Nature as well, but it's paywalled

Nature: An abandoned antibiotic makes a comeback to fight a common illness

I really hope there's something to this. I've seen on close hold how much pain and suffering Lyme disease can cause, and how little there is to do once it's developed into a chronic condition.

 

There are a number of new treatments on trial/offer, one of which has abated a bunch of my symptoms. The problem with most is the host of extra problems that come with such treatments though. I got neuropathy in my feet, which luckily disappeared several weeks after stopping treatment, others aren't so lucky.

If this chemical pans out it might be the first treatment that doesn't have those side effects because of it's very narrow scope. But let's first see some clinical trials in humans. I've gotten my hopes up before.

It would offcourse be wonderful if this chemical really could stop the spread of lyme all together. I don't know what it would do for co-infections though. My bartonella-test came back positive years back for example, which didn't surprise me because I had the typical purple bartonella-marks on my hips.

 

They can infect you, but only if they are much beloved... (Sorry, I couldn't resist. )

 

Doesn’t it depend where you are in the British Isles?

When I lived in a part of Scotland with high numbers of sheep, but low numbers of red deer, ‘tick fever’ was blamed on sheep ticks. (The red deer were a relatively recent (re) introduction to a number of the Western Isles, for the utility of Victoria/Edwardian landowners and not popular with the crofters, but sheep had been farmed there for thousands of years.)

 

yes messed up spelling causes many a smile so i will leave it there . thanks i am happy that you brought a smile to my face today .

 

Highlights

• A selective screen against B. burgdorferi led to the rediscovery of hygromycin A•
• The mechanism of selectivity is puzzling because hygromycin A targets the ribosome•
• Hygromycin A is smuggled into spirochetes by the conserved transporter BmpDEFG•
• Hygromycin A is efficacious in a mouse model without disturbing the microbiome

Summary
Lyme disease is on the rise. Caused by a spirochete Borreliella burgdorferi, it affects an estimated 500,000 people in the United States alone. The antibiotics currently used to treat Lyme disease are broad spectrum, damage the microbiome, and select for resistance in non-target bacteria. We therefore sought to identify a compound acting selectively against B. burgdorferi. A screen of soil micro-organisms revealed a compound highly selective against spirochetes, including B. burgdorferi. Unexpectedly, this compound was determined to be hygromycin A, a known antimicrobial produced by Streptomyces hygroscopicus. Hygromycin A targets the ribosomes and is taken up by B. burgdorferi, explaining its selectivity. Hygromycin A cleared the B. burgdorferi infection in mice, including animals that ingested the compound in a bait, and was less disruptive to the fecal microbiome than clinically relevant antibiotics. This selective antibiotic holds the promise of providing a better therapeutic for Lyme disease and eradicating it in the environment.

Graphical abstract



Link to paper: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)01058-8

 

This paper published in the journal Cell claims that they found Hygromycin A to be effective at killing B. burgdorferi (the bacteria that causes Lyme) in mice. The authors write: "his selective antibiotic holds the promise of providing a better therapeutic for Lyme disease and eradicating it in the environment."

I saw it discussed in some of the chronic Lyme Facebook groups.