Guest guest Posted January 23, 2010 Report Share Posted January 23, 2010 > > > I've heard that when someone doesn't respond to antibiotics for Lyme it may be due to untreated co-infections. These co-infections can be tricky to diagnose (tests not accurate). yes, that is a possible cause; statistically people with Borrelia plus coinfections respond less well to treatment (less improvement, more relapse etc.), especially with coinfections that are immune suppressive like Babesia. The same goes for people who have multiple Bb strains, something that is not detected with the normal Lyme tests. But there are probably other factors and this is one of the major issues that needs to be resolved. One suggestion (from Stoney Brook / Ben Luft) is that Borrelia strains may be very different regarding how aggressive, persistent or resistant to antibiotics they are. In that case the outcome will mostly depend on the strain that you got and not on the treatment (and that would be bad news for those of us who have been struggling to get treatment results for a long time ...). > It seems like no two people respond the same way with these tick-borne infections. yes, I'm sure there is huge individual variation and we don't know why. Is it because of their genetics, because of the Bb strain, because of coinfections (probably many are not monitored yet, the tick is a real pathogen zoo), because of specific environmental factors? > I've heard of people who were asymptomatic for years, then suddenly had a host of health problems which turned out to be Lyme related. A German MD in an area with lots of LD cases is doing a longtime study into Lyme. He is expected to publish his results soon, however up to now nothing in the official scientific literature. The finding in Germany is that about 90% of people who are infected with Borrelia are asymptomatic for some time, often years; only 10% develop obvious LD symptoms pretty soon after infection. But his impression is that ALL of the infected patients will develop Lyme disease within about 8 years. This would be an interesting twist to the 'false-positives' stories of the hardliners. It also fits in with the 'two-step' hypothesis for Lyme, that Bb infection is not the only requirement for getting LD. There has to be another factor involved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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