For more info on Lyme and related difficult to identify diseases, NYT columnist Ross Douhat wrote a book about his experience w/ Lyme and his ongoing adaptations. It's called...
The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery
charlangas · 32m ago
Both of my sisters (currently mid-30s) have had their lives on pause for over 10 years due to chronic Lyme disease because doctors in Mexico hadn't ever even heard of it. It took 4 years of pain for the first of them to be diagnosed. Not sure when, if ever, they'll be cured because when you don't treat Lyme disease within a few months of infection, it digs in and is incredibly difficult to kill.
Aurornis · 24m ago
> Not sure when, if ever, they'll be cured because when you don't treat Lyme disease within a few months of infection, it digs in and is incredibly difficult to kill
FYI, the idea that active infection continues to exist in hiding within the body is a fringe theory.
The linked article talks about one of the current theories for why some patients have persistent symptoms after the infection is treated. The theory involves certain components of the past infection lodging themselves in the liver where they persist and can cause symptoms.
This is a difficult topic because some alternative Lyme treatment providers will tell patients they have a persistent infection and then subject them to years of high-dose antibiotics with no scientific basis, which can create a separate set of problems without addressing anything.
netaustin · 1h ago
I contracted Lyme disease while on vacation in Cape Cod last year. The first symptom was left-side facial paralysis, which my physician diagnosed as Bell's Palsy, so I spent two weeks on steroids before we figured out the real issue. Three weeks of doxycycline cured the Lyme but left feeling pretty wrecked for more than a month afterwards! I seem to have avoided the chronic symptoms some people experience, but a low-dose antibiotic would have been great.
dec0dedab0de · 3m ago
Just to be pedantic, Bell's Palsy is the name of the condition not the cause. So it was Bell's Palsy caused by Lyme disease.
I have noticed that the line between condition and cause is often overlooked, even by doctors. For example this leads to people thinking Pinkeye/conjunctivitis is highly contagious, when it is still conjunctivitis if it is caused by getting something in your eye. I think that holds for everything that ends in -itis too Sinusitis, Arthritis, Tendonitis, etc.
I know that is a bit of a tangent, but you reminded me of someone who had bell's palsy telling me that it was actually shingles. I explained that just because it was caused by shingles doesn't mean it stops being Bell's Palsy, just like how it is still a cough if it's from the flu or from smoking. They ended up getting really angry at me about it, but I think hn might appreciate the semantics a bit more.
voidmain0001 · 34m ago
I'm on a second round of Doxy. The first was 21 days and now I have a 60 day prescription. It doesn't knock me out. I take the first dose early in the morning with a lot of water. I don't eat until noon, but not before first taking a capsule of probiotics to replenish gut bacteria. I take the second Doxy in the evening with a meal. Then 3 hours later I take another probiotic capsule to restore gut bacteria overnight. Maybe that regime is helping or maybe I'm just fortunate.
hentrep · 1h ago
Disclaimer: Not a doctor.
I think you’re alluding to this in your last statement, but standard treatment for Lyme can absolutely wreck your natural gut microbiome. This could explain some of the lingering chronic effects post-treatment. Did you try supplementing with fermented foods or probiotics after completing dox?
dcchambers · 53m ago
This is fantastic news. I live in Wisconsin - a tick and Lyme Disease hot spot. Ticks are one of the few bugs that really freak me out due to Lyme Disease, especially for my kids who spend a lot of time out playing in the grass.
Any news on the development of the fight against Lyme Disease is great news.
One key thing I've learned is that ticks are very unlikely to spread disease-causing bacteria within the first few hours of biting. So just do regular checks whenever you've been outside in tick-prone areas and get them off right away if found. If removed promptly the chance of infection is basically zero.
bentt · 2h ago
This is amazing and really needed in the northern US and Canada. It is also great they speak to the chronic lyme condition because many people get accused of it being psychosomatic or even false (similar with long Covid). Their theory of it being bacterial remnants in the liver is validating.
ixtli · 2h ago
Its sad that we needed to have a partially avoidable mass death due to COVID in order for people to start considering these chronic conditions more broadly in society. People have been having these issues for generations.
agos · 59m ago
look at it the other way: we got a couple of unexpected silver linings from the COVID hell. one is attention to these chronic conditions (finally!)
bentt · 31m ago
Yes! It's vital that we continue to look for opportunities in the midst of such a crisis.
almosthere · 38m ago
Now everyone agrees, experts are just normal people that have built a bias towards one ideological thing or another.
Long COVID? (looks up "party" stance)... that doesn't exist. Eat Apples.
bentt · 1h ago
I mean, sure.
But some things are just really complex and the root causes are very, very difficult to pin down. There was a lot sad about COVID, but like 4000th on the list is how it revealed the human dynamics that lead to chronic diseases being overlooked because science has no valid explanation for what's happening to patients. I say this as someone who suffered from Lyme Disease for a number of years.
jadbox · 3h ago
This is desperately needed. I have Midwest family who have suffered ten years due to persistent lyme disease from having a single tick bite.
registeredcorn · 49m ago
Same. Family member who lived out around Utah and Colorado. She had been racked with pain for something like 15-20 years. She was going to doctors constantly, trying to figure out what was wrong. She was labeled as a "drug seeker" and got shoved around for years as a result.
Later on, she came across a doctor who happened to used to live in the North East and recognized it as Lyme disease pretty much instantly. She still deals with pain on a constant on-going basis, but has been slightly lessened with more targeted medications, etc. Hopefully something like this can offer her and others like her some sustainable, long-term relief.
> Northwestern scientists identified that piperacillin, an antibiotic in the same class as penicillin, effectively cured mice of Lyme disease at 100-times less than the effective dose of doxycycline.
Would be nice if it translates to humans.
> The authors argue that piperacillin, which has already been FDA-approved as a safe treatment for pneumonia, could also be a candidate for preemptive interventions for those potentially exposed to Lyme (with a known deer tick bite).
CyberDildonics · 3h ago
Bypassing the clickbait we have this:
In two new studies led by bacteriologist Brandon L. Jutras, Northwestern scientists have identified an antibiotic that cures Lyme disease at a fraction of the dosage of the current “gold standard” treatment and discovered what may cause a treated infection to mimic chronic illness in patients. The studies were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
I thought that there are approved human vaccines, but they were voluntarily removed due to economic reasons and lack of adoption.
bluGill · 3h ago
There was, withdrawn in 2002. Protection wanes so even if you were one of the few who got it then you have no protection today. There are a couple new vaccines in the works, one in phase 3 testing so hopefully we get something in a few years.
mplanchard · 2h ago
Yeah there's what looks like a solid candidate going through a variety of worldwide trials right now.[0]
Very hopeful for a meaningful means of prevention in the coming years.
It's a complicated story. There were (almost certainly overstated by some) side effects and it just wasn't a super-effective vaccine. Still IMO shouldn't have been take off the market. Hopefully one of the vaccines under development pan out because Lyme is a real problem in some areas and increasingly spreading north.
micromacrofoot · 7m ago
There are multiple human vaccines in the works at the moment, earliest might be available towards the end of 2027 as long as they're not defunded by the current administration
ixtli · 2h ago
iirc the vaccines stopped the tick from successfully transferring the bacteria. it didn't make the body able to better combat it. (and if you read the article linked it explains that its not actually the killing of the spirochete that is the problem its the remains of it and how the host body responds to those remains.)
adregan · 3h ago
Wasn’t there a new Lyme’s vaccine in the works due to come out soon? Anyone aware of how that’s going?
In clinical trials - the one I was able to find has the first report due end of 2026, with the final end of 2027. I assume 6 months or a year after that to do paperwork before approval so I'm guessing late 2028 before we get it (assuming it passes trial, which isn't a given)
giantg2 · 3h ago
The one I heard about is supposed to be an antibody injection.
dev_l1x_be · 3h ago
It is kinda funny that humanity can kills entire species like the dodo while cannot eradicate a bacterium like Borrelia.
quesera · 2h ago
Big things are easier to eradicate, especially if they are slow, unaccustomed to being prey, and nutritious.
Eradicating a bacterium with wild animal reservoir populations (deer, white-footed mice, black-legged ticks, all of which are endemic species) is ... a much harder problem.
rarrrrrr · 2h ago
Strangely enough, there's even some likelihood that killing off the passenger pigeon actually promoted Borrelia burgdorferi. The passenger pigeon's main food source was tree mast. Large flocks of pigeons would descend and clear the forest floor of food. After it went extinct, the population of small animals which also eat tree mast exploded, and these are reservoir species for Borrelia.
If I could hunt Borrelia with spears it would be over
voidmain0001 · 48m ago
I would like to kill more deer which are part of the Lyme cycle. There are so many in the rural area I live, they remind of big city rats.
nkrisc · 1h ago
There were far fewer dodos than any given bacteria. You can also see a dodo.
binary132 · 1h ago
And here I thought “long Lyme” had been proven fake.
gavin-1 · 1h ago
"long Lyme" isn't well defined, but you're probably thinking of chronic lyme [1]. This article refers to PTLD.
The distinction matters. Chronic lyme is quackery that encourages people to pursue aggressive long-term antibiotic treatment for a non-existent persistent bacterial infection. Often these are people who have never been infected with Borrelia in the first place.
The article directly contradicts the persistent (undetectable) bacterial infection "chronic lyme" theory.
Agreed. Long Lyme certainly exists. I appear to have it as do numerous acquaintances. I wrote "appear to have it" because a blood test for Borrelia returns negative. However, just two weeks ago a doctor told me that Borrelia can evade a blood test by infecting the nervous system. That was news to me so I found this from NIH in the USA. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8870494/ Borrelia can cross over to the CNS. Lovely.
The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery
FYI, the idea that active infection continues to exist in hiding within the body is a fringe theory.
The linked article talks about one of the current theories for why some patients have persistent symptoms after the infection is treated. The theory involves certain components of the past infection lodging themselves in the liver where they persist and can cause symptoms.
This is a difficult topic because some alternative Lyme treatment providers will tell patients they have a persistent infection and then subject them to years of high-dose antibiotics with no scientific basis, which can create a separate set of problems without addressing anything.
I have noticed that the line between condition and cause is often overlooked, even by doctors. For example this leads to people thinking Pinkeye/conjunctivitis is highly contagious, when it is still conjunctivitis if it is caused by getting something in your eye. I think that holds for everything that ends in -itis too Sinusitis, Arthritis, Tendonitis, etc.
I know that is a bit of a tangent, but you reminded me of someone who had bell's palsy telling me that it was actually shingles. I explained that just because it was caused by shingles doesn't mean it stops being Bell's Palsy, just like how it is still a cough if it's from the flu or from smoking. They ended up getting really angry at me about it, but I think hn might appreciate the semantics a bit more.
I think you’re alluding to this in your last statement, but standard treatment for Lyme can absolutely wreck your natural gut microbiome. This could explain some of the lingering chronic effects post-treatment. Did you try supplementing with fermented foods or probiotics after completing dox?
Any news on the development of the fight against Lyme Disease is great news.
One key thing I've learned is that ticks are very unlikely to spread disease-causing bacteria within the first few hours of biting. So just do regular checks whenever you've been outside in tick-prone areas and get them off right away if found. If removed promptly the chance of infection is basically zero.
Long COVID? (looks up "party" stance)... that doesn't exist. Eat Apples.
But some things are just really complex and the root causes are very, very difficult to pin down. There was a lot sad about COVID, but like 4000th on the list is how it revealed the human dynamics that lead to chronic diseases being overlooked because science has no valid explanation for what's happening to patients. I say this as someone who suffered from Lyme Disease for a number of years.
Later on, she came across a doctor who happened to used to live in the North East and recognized it as Lyme disease pretty much instantly. She still deals with pain on a constant on-going basis, but has been slightly lessened with more targeted medications, etc. Hopefully something like this can offer her and others like her some sustainable, long-term relief.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&hl=en&cluster=384...
Would be nice if it translates to humans.
> The authors argue that piperacillin, which has already been FDA-approved as a safe treatment for pneumonia, could also be a candidate for preemptive interventions for those potentially exposed to Lyme (with a known deer tick bite).
In two new studies led by bacteriologist Brandon L. Jutras, Northwestern scientists have identified an antibiotic that cures Lyme disease at a fraction of the dosage of the current “gold standard” treatment and discovered what may cause a treated infection to mimic chronic illness in patients. The studies were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Very hopeful for a meaningful means of prevention in the coming years.
[0]: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
Eradicating a bacterium with wild animal reservoir populations (deer, white-footed mice, black-legged ticks, all of which are endemic species) is ... a much harder problem.
https://reviverestore.org/projects/about-the-passenger-pigeo...
The distinction matters. Chronic lyme is quackery that encourages people to pursue aggressive long-term antibiotic treatment for a non-existent persistent bacterial infection. Often these are people who have never been infected with Borrelia in the first place.
The article directly contradicts the persistent (undetectable) bacterial infection "chronic lyme" theory.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_Lyme_disease