B orrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, can persist in animals and humans because it has evolved complex mechanisms to avoid the immune system.
In a 1996 interview with The Scientist magazine, Stephen Barthold, DVM, PhD, the researcher who developed the first mouse model of Lyme disease, described Borrelia burgdorferi’s ability to avoid immune detection as a form of cloaking. “It’s using some sort of stealth-bomber-type mechanism,” he said.
Since then, Professor Barthold has gone on to partner with many researchers in the pursuit of learning how B. burgdorferi causes chronic infection, including Monica Embers, PhD, from Tulane University.
Nicole Baumgarth, DVM, PhD, now the director of the Johns Hopkins Lyme and Tickborne Diseases Research and Education Institute, has years of experience collaborating with Barthold.
The latest research by Baumgarth, Barthold and others at University of California, Davis offers the science community one more clue as to how Borrelia is able to subvert the immune system leading to persistent infection in mice.
Stephen Barthold, DVM, PhD
Nicole Baumgarth, DVM, PhD
Their paper entitled, “Borrelia burgdorferi Infection–Induced Persistent IgM Secretion Controls Bacteremia, but Not Bacterial Dissemination or Tissue Burden,” has shed new light on how these pathogens persist in tissues, but present in very low numbers in the blood.
As Dr. Baumgarth tells me, “Blood is not the way Borrelia gets around the mice. Rather it migrates through tissues.”……….Join or login below to continue reading.
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