Prof Ying Zhang Borrelia persisters – Interview and drug activity

Nov 17, 2015 | Uncategorised

  Interview with Prof. Ying Zhang at the NorVect Conference 2015 Published on Sep 29, 2015 Prof Ying Zhang from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health explains why Lyme disease is so difficult to treat. Having worked with Tuberculosis (TB) for many years, he sees the similarities and differences between these to bacteria. With Tuberculosis it is known that you have to treat with certain drug combinations that kill the growing form and the non-growing form (persisters) and if you treat shorter than 6 months, the patient will get a relapse. The bacterium that causes Lyme disease is much more advanced than the TB bacterium, and the main reason is that it also takes a persisting form. These persister forms of the Borrelia bacteria cannot be cultured. The two views – ILADS and IDSA are two different ways of seeing the same disease. Prof. Zhang thinks they are both right. When it comes to acute Lyme disease, IDSA is right. Then you only need shorter courses of treatment. When the disease turns chronic, longer courses of treatment with the right drug combinations are needed (ILADS view). The full presentation from Dr Zhang is available on the Norvect website from their 2015 conference http://norvect.no/about-norvect/     Identification of novel activity against Borrelia burgdorferi persisters using an FDA approved drug library Jie Feng, Ting Wang, Wanliang Shi, Shuo Zhang, David Sullivan, Paul G Auwaerter and Ying Zhang Published online 2 July 2014 from abstract – ‘We identified 165 agents approved for use in other disease conditions that had more activity than doxycycline and amoxicillin against B. burgdorferi persisters. The top 27 drug candidates from the 165 hits were confirmed to have higher anti-persister activity than the current frontline antibiotics....