New studies offer insight into Lyme disease’s treatment, lingering symptoms

My mother got a tick bite and felt off and the doctor told her she had allergies and sinus infection due to high pollen. Luckily my younger brother is a physician and told her to go back and ask for a Lyme disease test. They said okay but said Lyme disease is really rare and wasn’t necessary. Long story short she was positive but was caught early enough that 30 days Doxy was all she needed.<p>That same year I was bitten and had a super itchy spot near my private regions. It was crazy itch and made a bullseye rash. I went to a clinic and they said they had never seen the bullseye rash and it was textbook Lyme disease (or one other common tick disease). Same was treated with Doxy and was fine. It’s an strange disease because if caught early super cheap antibiotics work well… but if has spread through your body it can take years to recover and be quite serious!

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&#x27;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.

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.<p>Any news on the development of the fight against Lyme Disease is great news.<p>One key thing I&#x27;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&#x27;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.

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.

The studies mentioned (but not linked?): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scholar.google.com&#x2F;scholar?oi=bibs&amp;hl=en&amp;cluster=17981514188681742351" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scholar.google.com&#x2F;scholar?oi=bibs&amp;hl=en&amp;cluster=179...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scholar.google.com&#x2F;scholar?oi=bibs&amp;hl=en&amp;cluster=3846230660850991448" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scholar.google.com&#x2F;scholar?oi=bibs&amp;hl=en&amp;cluster=384...</a>

Bypassing the clickbait we have this:<p><i>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>

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&#x27;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&#x27;ll be cured because when you don&#x27;t treat Lyme disease within a few months of infection, it digs in and is incredibly difficult to kill.

This is desperately needed. I have Midwest family who have suffered ten years due to persistent lyme disease from having a single tick bite.

Lyme disease does exist on the west coast, including in the Bay Area. A friend in Los Altos got Lyme disease from a tick in her yard. This is the worst time of year for ticks in the Bay Area. I&#x27;ve picked off over 100 ticks while doing field work in Henry Coe State Park. The one advantage we have on the west coast is that our ticks are larger and you usually notice when one starts crawling on your skin and especially when one bites you.

Lyme carditis - antibiotic instead of pacemaker<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC9125511&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC9125511&#x2F;</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.viamedica.pl&#x2F;folia_cardiologica&#x2F;article&#x2F;view&#x2F;42288" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.viamedica.pl&#x2F;folia_cardiologica&#x2F;article&#x2F;vie...</a>

For more info on Lyme and related difficult to identify diseases, NYT columnist Ross Douhat wrote a book about his experience w&#x2F; Lyme and his ongoing adaptations. It&#x27;s called...<p>The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery

I found this break down helpful from the study: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;danielcameronmd.com&#x2F;could-piperacillin-be-the-lyme-disease-breakthrough-we-need&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;danielcameronmd.com&#x2F;could-piperacillin-be-the-lyme-d...</a><p>1. The Study Was in Mice, Not Humans 2. Mice Don’t Develop Chronic Symptoms 3. No Co-Infections 4. IV-Only Formulation<p>Another promising and more tested treatment is that of doctor Richard I. Horowitz: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sciprofiles.com&#x2F;publication&#x2F;view&#x2F;834d15f5acf0268c9bcb0d4f35bc4e55" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sciprofiles.com&#x2F;publication&#x2F;view&#x2F;834d15f5acf0268c9bc...</a><p>I have been suffering from Lyme disease for over 15 years but I just discovered it was Lyme 2 years ago. I had a negative test first but did not trust it and did a test at a specialised lab in Germany and that came back positive. From what I hear is that the normal antibodies test only works for 50%.<p>Suffering from Lyme is brutal, and you look fine from the outside so it&#x27;s hard for others to relate too, it attacks your whole system and if it&#x27;s in your brain and nerve system it can make you feel heavily depressed and anxious like you have PTSD, this makes social events feel like a warzone.<p>For a period of time I could bairly talk, I just could not find the words anymore. If friends or family of my get a tick bit I always suggest them to get antibotics even if you did not have a bullseye, better safe than sorry and the risk is of getting it is way greater than what the antibiotics will do to your body.

On a related note, the Trump administration frozen more than $790 million in federal funding for NU because of &quot;ongoing federal antisemitism investigations&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dailynorthwestern.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;05&#x2F;05&#x2F;lateststories&#x2F;by-the-numbers-the-trump-administration-has-frozen-millions-in-federal-support-for-northwestern-heres-what-it-means-for-science-funding-on-campus&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dailynorthwestern.com&#x2F;2025&#x2F;05&#x2F;05&#x2F;lateststories&#x2F;by-th...</a>

&gt; 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.<p>Would be nice if it translates to humans.<p>&gt; 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).

Earlier release that links the study: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.northwestern.edu&#x2F;stories&#x2F;2025&#x2F;04&#x2F;the-antibiotic-that-takes-the-bite-out-of-lyme&#x2F;?fj=1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.northwestern.edu&#x2F;stories&#x2F;2025&#x2F;04&#x2F;the-antibiotic...</a> (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43863980">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43863980</a>)

How strange that scientific research just like this has become extremely political.<p>Case in point: The Trump administration has cut Northwestern off from over a quarter billion dollars in funding because of &quot;anti-semitism.&quot; Note, that the vast majority of this money is for research just like the one linked in this article.<p>Of course, people seem to be arguing about anti-semitism more than cutting off funding for research. But make no mistake: cutting off research funding is <i>exactly</i> what is happening. And that has practically <i>nothing</i> to do with antisemitism.

&quot;...doxycycline (and other generic antibiotics) wreak havoc on the microbiome, killing beneficial bacteria in the gut and causing troubling side effects...&quot;<p>Doxycycline is used as prophylaxis for a wide variety of pathogens; either the risk is tolerable with them, or the alarm is needlessly elevated.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk&#x2F;advice&#x2F;malaria&#x2F;doxycycline" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk&#x2F;advice&#x2F;malaria&#x2F;doxycycline</a>

Simple way to detect if you&#x27;re in an area with ticks: tape a white washcloth to a long stick and swish it back and forth around the ground. Check the cloth for ticks every so often and you&#x27;ll find the tick &quot;hotspots&quot; and can avoid them. Permethrin-treated clothing is also fantastic for protecting against ticks - it&#x27;s just highly toxic to water life and cats in liquid form.

I&#x27;ve recently became friends with an individual who suffers from lingering chronic effects from Lyme disease. I&#x27;m never walking out in the countryside again without knee-high boots, jeans tugged in my socks and the strongest bug repellent spray that money can buy.

I had a tick bite years about with bullseye and didn’t get treated. I’ve had Lyme disease-related symptoms ever since, but and assume from what I’ve read it’s too late to do anything about it. Would this treatment still help or am I still fucked?

I thought that there are approved human vaccines, but they were voluntarily removed due to economic reasons and lack of adoption.

Our kid got bit by a tick. Was lucky enough that it had the bulls eye pattern and was able to look it up. She got a crazy high temperature. Was crazy. A strong antibiotic cleared it up.<p>I really wish there still was a vaccine available (for humans). I treat my pant legs and jacket sleeves with permethrin, which slowly kills the ticks - but does so usually before they would attempt to bite. One of the better camping tricks that I&#x27;ve applied to everyday life.

<i>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).</i><p>This strikes me as somehwat odd: as far as I&#x27;m aware there are worldwide issues with overuse of anitbiotics leading to various bacteria becoming resistent (and a quick serach seems to indicate this is also the case for piperacillin), but here they&#x27;re saying that it would be ok for a probabaly large amount of people (as in: millions annualy?) to get antibiotics preemptively? Or is the reasoning that the does is low enough that it&#x27;s fine?<p>I mean, it&#x27;s not uncommon for me and people I know to get a bite multiple times a year. It&#x27;s better when taking precautions and know what to avoid, but still, sometimes you just have to be in tick-ridden areas and it&#x27;s impractical to check yourself every hour.

Wasn’t there a new Lyme’s vaccine in the works due to come out soon? Anyone aware of how that’s going?

And here I thought “long Lyme” had been proven fake.

It is kinda funny that humanity can kills entire species like the dodo while cannot eradicate a bacterium like Borrelia.

Good time to remind people that right next to the town of Lyme CT is Plum Island Animal Disease Center, who happened to be researching tick based disease transmission when Lyme disease was first discovered (named after the town that had the first case). Crazy coincidence.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.defenseone.com&#x2F;threats&#x2F;2019&#x2F;07&#x2F;did-us-invent-lyme-disease-1960s-house-aims-find-out&#x2F;158529&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.defenseone.com&#x2F;threats&#x2F;2019&#x2F;07&#x2F;did-us-invent-lym...</a>

Years ago I suddenly had a swollen knee. So painful that I barely can walk. I dragged myself to Kaiser thinking that I torn something in my knee. Later on, it was diagnosed as arthritis<p>Doctor said it was incurable, and gave me a list of meds where the side effects looked worse than the disease.<p>I rejected it, and started examining every piece of data known to mankind.<p>This led to me to variety of things. First was biological, a new tech drug that’s super expensive and I had to be on it for life. I was only 30, and no way I’m taking a drug for life at this age. What if I get laid off (or go travel) and can’t afford the 5k price tag per dose for my entire life?<p>I then found other treatments, ones more natural but scorned on by the medical elite professionals. I went to Eastern Europe to do oxygen therapy.<p>I came back home, and was well. I told the clinic that I’m healed now and don’t need to come back for the biologic anymore. The staff at the clinic were appalled — they never heard of a case of someone getting healed and weaning off their meds<p>The medical system is here to squeeze everything from you. You are the top of the line revenue stream. Your health and wellbeing is in direct conflict of their objective function — make more money<p>Never forget this