Research Touts Biodiversity to Fight Lyme Disease
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has logged as many as 17,000 cases of Lyme disease a year recently, making Lyme "the most common vector-borne disease in the United States." Concentrated in the northeast, mid-Atlantic and upper Midwest, the disease is often difficult to diagnose so there are probably more cases than are reported. Caused by a spiral-shaped organism called a spirochete bacterium (Borrelia burgdorferi) that causes Lyme disease in humans transmitted by ixodid ticks. Lyme causes a characteristic skin rash, flu-like symptoms, arthritis and neurological damage. Unfortunately, a recently approved vaccine is not completely effective, but recent research has discovered information that may one day lead to prevention, vaccines, or treatment.
Because the Lyme disease bacteria is difficult to culture, doctors look for the first sign that Lyme disease may be at work, often a small to large red bull's eye rash. As the infection spreads, different parts of the body respond with fatigue, body aches, headache, fever and a stiff neck. Treatment with antibiotics in early stages of the disease is effective in most cases but not all and not if the disease isn't identified in time.
Recently, microbiologist Frank Gherardini, of the University of Georgia, explained that "All bacterial pathogens described to date have developed specialized systems to acquire iron from their hosts." A press release written by Phil Williams explains that "Current dogma states that to be successful in humans, bacteria must overcome strict iron limitations that the human body imparts on them. Although iron is abundant in humans, the amount of free iron is well below the levels required to support the growth of most bacteria. To our surprise, we found that B. burgdorferi doesn't even require iron. In fact, iron is extremely toxic to it." Mass spectroscopy and research in radioactive iron transport techniques showed "the levels of iron inside the cells of B. burgdorferi are 1,000-fold less than those measured in other pathogenic bacteria." Unfortunately, all this knowledge about iron is still too new to speculate about how it might help in the fight against Lyme Disease.
Other recent research has discovered that one way to combat Lyme disease is to maintain biodiversity, which makes ecosystems healthy. Biodiversity, which involves a diversity of small mammals, makes people healthier too, and less likely to get Lyme disease, according to the June issue of Conservation Biology. "This is the first study showing that biodiversity may reduce the risk of disease in people," according to a press release.
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