NORTHEASTERN RESEARCHERS INVESTIGATE FOUR PROMISING NEW TREATMENTS FOR LYME DISEASE

‘when North­eastern researchers reported last May how the bac­terium that causes the dis­ease evades antibi­otics, sug­gesting new treat­ments, the media and the gen­eral public took notice. Uni­ver­sity Dis­tin­guished Pro­fessor Kim Lewis, who leads the Lyme dis­ease research team, is now expanding that ther­a­peutic reach with the help of a $1.5 mil­lion grant from the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation. The team is pur­suing four arms of treatment-​​related research at Northeastern’s Antimi­cro­bial Dis­covery Center, which Lewis directs. They are: a mouse study of a reg­imen that erad­i­cated the bac­terium in the test tube, set­ting the stage for human trials; antibi­otic cock­tails using existing drugs; strate­gies to dis­cover new drugs that selec­tively target the Lyme bac­terium; and ways to alter the com­po­si­tion of the microbiome—the com­mu­nity of microor­gan­isms inhab­iting the human body—to stop the autoim­mune reac­tions that char­ac­terize the disease. All four show exciting promise. The grant, Lewis says, “will give us the flex­i­bility to test our approaches in par­allel, which will save us an enor­mous amount of time.” If Lyme is caught early, patients gen­er­ally recover quickly when treated with antibi­otics, pri­marily doxy­cy­line. How­ever, 10 to 20 per­cent of patients go on to develop a debil­i­tating chronic con­di­tion called Post-​​Treatment Lyme Dis­ease Syn­drome, or PTLDS, with symp­toms that include extreme fatigue, arthritis, muscle pain, and cog­ni­tive difficulties. “I find it amazing that when you show up at the doctor’s office you are not told that there is a 10 to 20 per­cent chance that your life as you know it has ended,” says Lewis. “Nobody seems to be focusing on the next step: How to pre­vent the sub­se­quent rise of the chronic condition.”  ...