The Global Search for Education: More Research – Ticks, Lyme disease, Monica Embers discusses animal model research.
 C.M. Rubin
The take home for me from Katie Couric’s recent report on Lyme disease is that there are still too many unanswered questions. We need more research to understand Lyme, which affects 300,000 victims each year because we don’t have answers. We do know the term “chronic Lyme” is a conversation stopper in some medical circles, although most doctors seem to agree that when Lyme is caught late in patients, it can lead to their becoming persistently ill with chronic-like symptoms after antibiotic treatment. Are these symptoms due to Lyme, co-infections from the same tick bite, or something else? The evidence that there is something more complex going on seems substantial.
A team of scientists led by Dr. Monica E. Embers of the Tulane National Primate Research Center and Dr. Stephen W. Barthold, Director of the Center of Comparative Medicine at the University of California at Davis, carried out two experiments last year on rhesus macaques (monkeys) to determine whether Borrelia persists after antibiotic treatments. The studies published in PLOS ONE explored antibiotic efficacy using nonhuman primates. Rhesus macaques were infected with B. burgdorferi and a portion received aggressive antibiotic therapy 4-6 months later. The results demonstrated that B. burgdorferi …
There is a long way to go yet. It is nice to know someone out there is doing research.