New test shows promise in identifying new drugs to treat Lyme disease
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have developed a test they say will allow them to test thousands of FDA-approved drugs to see if they will work against the bacteria that causes tick-borne Lyme disease.
The researchers, reporting Nov. 3 in the journal PLOS ONE, say doctors and patients are desperate for new treatments for Lyme disease, which in many people is cleared up with a few weeks of antibiotics but, in some, lingers long after completion of the standard drug regimen. Until now, it has been very difficult to determine on a large scale which drugs work against these lingering Borrelia burgdorferi – the bacteria that cause Lyme disease – hampering new drug discovery for the organism.