Why do some people recover quickly and others not?

Doctors have long puzzled why some people recover from Lyme disease while others remain chronically ill for months, years, or even decades. A new study provides some clues about immune system markers in the blood that are elevated among people with prolonged Lyme disease symptoms, even after being given antibiotics.

in the new researchIn a paper published May 9 in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases, researchers found that among people treated for Lyme disease, interferon alpha It was discovered that an immune system marker in the blood called . lingering symptoms.

Interferon-alpha is one of the few important signaling proteins the body makes to instruct immune cells to fight bacteria and viruses. Too high a blood level can overwork the immune system, causing pain, swelling, and fatigue. This is a common symptom of Lyme disease.

Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts University, New Study.

“We think this can cause persistence of symptoms,” Strle said. And because drugs that lower interferon-alpha are already approved, the study could represent a potential treatment option for lingering symptoms of Lyme disease, he suggested.

The study, which was small, including 79 people diagnosed with Lyme disease, found only an association between elevated interferon-alpha levels and persistent Lyme disease symptoms; No cause was found. Larger clinical trials will be needed to confirm this association.

Statistics show that between 30,000 and 500,000 people get Lyme disease each year from tick bites. C.direct current. Most infections are mild and easily treated with antibiotics. About 10% experience symptoms such as fatigue and foggy head, along with muscle, joint and neuralgia that persists after treatment.

The new discovery is why some people person infected with Lyme disease suffer from chronic symptoms. Previously, some researchers thought that a specific strain of the spiral-shaped Borrelia burgdorferi bacterium that causes Lyme disease might be the culprit. Some wondered if undetectable low-level infections remained in the body after treatment. New research suggests that the body’s response to the bacteria, rather than the worms themselves, can cause long-lasting symptoms.

It’s still unclear why some people have elevated levels of interferon-alpha, but Stre said they’re looking into possible genetic causes.

Research into interferon-alpha is still in its early stages, but Dr. Roberta Debiaci, director of the Division of Pediatric Diseases at the National Children’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., called it “very well designed and interesting.”

“This provides a potential therapeutic target that can be studied in clinical trials to treat these patients,” she said.

for those who are dealing Symptoms of ongoing Lyme diseasea biological explanation for the condition called pOst-ttreatment lime ddisease ssyndromeor PTLDS is a step forward.

Symptoms of Lyme disease over the years

Rebecca Greenberg isn’t entirely sure when she first contracted Lyme disease, but she has her suspicions. Greenberg, now 26, said her mother pinned a small, hard tick off the back of her neck when she was nine years old after playing on a playground near Albany, New York. remember. She may have had numerous tick bites during her time in the Adirondack Mountains, but she didn’t worry until she felt sick at the age of 15.

“I was so tired I told my mom I couldn’t get up to go to school anymore,” said Greenberg, who grew up in upstate New York and now lives in South Florida. “I started having sore muscles, sore joints, and migraines.”

Doctors told Greenberg that her symptoms were likely hormonal and prescribed anti-anxiety medications when she was rushed to the emergency room after becoming unable to move her left side. recommended to see a neurologist. Those doctors didn’t help much either, Greenberg said. Eventually her symptoms became so severe that she was unable to attend school and required a wheelchair.

It wasn’t until 2011 that a pediatrician friend suggested Lyme disease after Greenberg’s mother posted on Facebook about her daughter’s mysterious illness.She soon found out that an antibody test showed Greenberg had Lyme disease. Two other bacterial infections, babesiosis and Bartonella.

I still suffer from fatigue and neuralgia. The most debilitating symptoms of her Lyme disease, she said, are psychological effects such as severe anxiety, depression and hallucinations.

“I still put band-aids on basically every symptom,” she said. “One tick changed my life.”

Why Lyme Disease Is So Hard To Diagnose

As the geographic spread of Lyme ticks intensifies, researchers and health officials agree there is an urgent need for more accurate tests that can detect infections at an early stage.

“There is no doubt that the prevalence of Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases is increasing,” Stoll said.

of Environmental Protection Agency warns Disease-carrying ticks are most active in hot weather, and climate change is likely to allow insects to increasingly survive winters and spread beyond the Northeast, Northern California, and upper Midwest regions. It is considered

Testing for Lyme disease is complicated, Debiasi said, especially for doctors unfamiliar with the process.

“So a lot of people with Lyme get overlooked, or people who have symptoms are told they have Lyme when they don’t really have Lyme,” she said. To tell. “When you combine that with the bad information on the internet, it’s going to create a lot of chaos.”

Part of the problem is that when this bacterium is transmitted from ticks to humans, it spreads rapidly through the body at levels that are undetectable by testing.

“This quickly becomes a problem of detection,” explained Brandon Jutras, associate professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech.

Experts say serology, which looks for antibodies in the blood, is the best method available for diagnosing Lyme disease. However, although antibody tests show that the immune system has launched an attack against viruses or bacteria, they cannot tell if you have an active infection. It doesn’t work until his immune system produces enough antibodies, which can take him six weeks or more after his first tick bite.

The CDC recommends using a combination of antibody tests to diagnose Lyme disease, including an immunoassay antibody test such as ELISA followed by an immunoblot antibody test such as a Western blot test.

Physicians and health officials recognize the need for more reliable Lyme disease tests that can detect infection early.

“We need to do better,” said Jutras, who is working with a team at Virginia Tech to develop a rapid Lyme test that can identify actual infection from early signs of a tick bite. .

“What we really want is a test that says, ‘Does the person still have Borelli spirochete?'” [Lyme bacteria], and should be treated with antibiotics? said Brian Fallon, Ph.D., director of the Center for Lyme and Tick-Borne Disease Research at Columbia University.

The Controversy Over ‘Chronic Lyme Disease’

Due to inadequate testing, there is no way to link long-lasting symptoms to initial Lyme infection. Many doctors avoid diagnosing chronic Lyme disease because the term chronic Lyme disease refers to a lingering infection.

“You can’t say that a Lyme disease diagnosis six years ago, for example, is related to what you’re experiencing now,” Debiaci said. “Symptoms such as musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, difficulty thinking, and depression are non-specific.

Fallon of Columbia University likes the term “long lime.”

“The word ‘chronic’ is a reasonable term if you’re referring to having symptoms on a chronic basis,” says Fallon. “The problem is people who think they have an advanced chronic infection and need more antibiotic treatment.”

DeBiasis argues that the symptoms people experience are real, even if the PTLDS experience is the exception.

As a pediatrician, she has seen panicked parents seek unproven treatments when they find ticks in their children.A recent study published in the journal Pediatric researchDeBiasi et al. found that 75% of children with Lyme disease improved within 6 months of antibiotic treatment, but 9% had symptoms that impacted function after 6 months.

“Give it a little more time and it seems to make a full recovery,” Debiaci said.

With the exception of Pfizer and Valneva, which are testing Lyme disease vaccines in clinical trials, the drug development industry has mostly not focused its energy and money on Lyme disease. Federal research grants are also lacking, Jutras said.

“While many private foundations are actively involved in funding Lyme University research, it is time to revisit some of our priorities at the federal level in relation to where research is being spent. There may be.”