Why Isn't a 3-Week Course of Antibiotics Enough
for Lyme Disease?
The Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb) bacteria have a 4-week growth cycle and are
most vulnerable to being killed during the week that they are reproducing.
Treatment of less than 4-6 weeks often fails to kill all the Bb bacteria.
Some people who get treated early seem fine after 3 or 4 weeks of treatment.
However, many of them will relapse months or years later, when diagnosis is more
difficult. It can take months or years of antibiotics to treat chronic Lyme, and IV
treatment may be needed. It is much more efficient to risk over-treating it at the early
stage than to have to treat it more extensively later, with the patient enduring years
of chronic symptoms. Even at the late stage, many people are helped considerably
by long-term antibiotics, although they may never be totally cured.
Bb bacteria have several tricks to avoid being killed:
1. When antibiotics are in the bloodstream, the spirochetes can leave the
bloodstream through the blood vessel wall and hide in the tissues.
2. The Bb spirochetes can avoid detection by the immune system. A spirochete
can enter a white blood cell without being killed, roll around inside it and coat itself
with white blood cell matter, and then leave the cell and float around in the
bloodstream disguised as another white blood cell. Then the other white blood cells
don't even try to attack it.
3. Bb bacteria can hide in the brain, where many antibiotics can't reach them.
4. Bb spirochetes can cluster together and create a biofilm that protects them
from antibiotics and the immune system's white blood cells.
5. Bb spirochetes can convert into a cell wall-deficient form, so antibiotics that
work by attacking the cell wall can't destroy them.
6. Bb bacteria can change into a cystic form, which most antibiotics can't destroy.
Some Lyme disease doctors prescribe Flagyl to kill the cysts.
7. Bb spirochetes can change their outer surface protein, making it difficult for
the body to recognize it and create an appropriate immune response.
Dr. Charles Ray Jones, who has treated over 16,000 children for Lyme disease, has
cured about 75% of them by using these guidelines:
Continue treatment for at least 2 months
after all signs & symptoms are gone.
Lyme Association of Greater Kansas City
913-438-5963
Lymefight @aol.com
www. Lymefight.info