krisn

Thanks. I've spent 3.5 years on research for the Lyme documentary UNDER OUR SKIN, and 5.5 years of research for the book. I believe that some of the 20% of treated patients who go on to have chronic symptoms have undetected co-infections. The book explains the reasoning behind this. I'm giving a 20 minute online presentation on this Sat. at 11EST: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/6715850012795/WN_KUIbToN3S_... Tick Talk

Insert applause here. I second this.

I wrote up the blog for this study, and I agree it was poorly written and an incremental finding at best. To me, the most important point is that the IDSA/CDC has been recommending doxy for decades knowing that other drugs are more effective. To PragmaticPup: There is, however, lots of evidence supporting the point that Lyme spirochetes easily survive 2 to 4 weeks of doxy through the formation of blebs. Look up the primate studies by Monica Embers @Tulane and the mice studies by Barthold @UCDavis. Borrelia, like Syphilis, is notoriously hard to culture, and Barthold says that persistence is the "rule rather that the exception." I think there have only been 7 randomized double blind clinical treatment trials on humans since the 1981 discovery, and they all tested single drugs, rather than the drug cocktails, which might address both the spirochete and bleb forms of the bacteria. Michal Tal at Stanford is doing groundbreaking work on ways the Lyme bacteria evades the human immune system. I don't want to steal her thunder, but we definitely need new approaches to treating this formidable disease.