This article needs to be seen. This is the model by which proper antibiotic treatment for chronic lyme will eventually be studied. They were able to find live spirochetes in their test subjects after treatment far in excess of IDSA recommendations. It basically validates the observations that LLMDs have been seeing in the field for decades now:
- When treated early (within a month), a short course of oral doxy is usually (but not always) effective.
- If the infection is allowed to progress awhile (4 months in this study) oral doxy does not kill everything.
- 1 month of IV rocephin + 2 months of oral doxy are still inadequate for most subjects after the 4 month infection mark.
- Much longer term combination and/or pulsed treatment may be required to treat later stage infections
There were major changes in how difficult the infection was to treat after only 4 months. One can only imagine what they are going to find when they start looking at what happens when they wait years before treating, or when they start throwing in confounding variables like coinfections. The lab evidence is going to come closer and closer to mirroring the real-world evidence gathered by LLMDs.