Sheila Wood

In-Vitro Susceptibility of Different Morphological Forms of Borrelia burgdorferi to Common Lyme Antibiotics in Combination with Antimicrobial Peptides

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was conducted with three antibiotics commonly used to treat Lyme disease (doxycycline, erythromycin, and tinidazole) and three AMPs (cecropin P1, magainin 1, and LL-37) against one strain of Borrelia burgdorferi. The susceptibility of spirochete and spheroplast (cyst) forms was determined by direct cell counting using dark field microscopy. Significant synergy was seen when erythromycin was combined with cecropin P1. Spirochete growth decreased (P=0.0015) and spheroplast (cyst) growth decreased (P=0.001) when compared to the growth control. Synergy was also seen when tinidazole was combined with LL-37. Spheroplast growth decreased (P=0.015). Combining antimicrobial peptides with commonly prescribed antibiotics to treat Lyme disease may provide a new approach to the treatment of chronic infections due to the significant synergistic effect of a combination therapy.

Understanding the Bacterial Approach to Living in Community

Let us first examine the first question. How do microbes make the choice to thrive, survive, or die? The microbiome or community of microbes, in our bowel outnumbers the cells of our body. This body of microbes is acquired shortly after birth and reflects what is present in our intake of nutriment that in turn is reflective of our environment to some degree. Since it has been shown in mice that bowel flora, individual strains of bacteria, and/ or ratios of bacterial species can actually affect our mood, could our basic bowel flora actually help mold personality from birth? More importantly, should this even be studied? A salientfeature of bowel flora research is its suggested connection to autism, which would itself be a reason to study the development and composition of bowel flora in the animal model from birth.