Follow-up email to Adrian Duncan, Group Vice President, Global Head of Education & Medical Affairs at WebMD.
First email can be found here.
---------- Original Message ----------
From: CARL TUTTLE <runagain@comcast.net>
To: "aduncan@webmd.net" <aduncan@webmd.net>
Cc: "cme@medscape.net" <cme@medscape.net>, "caitlin@medlitera.com" <caitlin@medlitera.com>, "naseem@medlitera.com" <naseem@medlitera.com>, "michelle@medlitera.com" <michelle@medlitera.com>
Date: 10/28/2025 9:28 AM EDT
Subject: Re: Medscape Now! Understanding the Latest Evidence and Best Practices for Interprofessional Care of Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome
Dear Mr. Duncan,
In 2016 Dr. Paul Auwaerter, past president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America coauthored a study revealing the persister form of Borrelia burgdorferi resistant to antibiotics.
Here is a timeline of events:
2015
Standard antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease does not kill persistent Borrelia bacteria.
http://droopyyoupi.blogspot.com/2015/08/standart-antibiotic-treatment-for-lyme.html
Excerpt:
-What has tuberculosis and Borrelia burgdorferi in common? In the late stage of the disease occurs persistent (tolerant) bacteria, which essentially means that the bacteria lasts and lasts and lasts. They protect themselves against antibiotics and are difficult to treat.
-Both Borrelia burgdorferi and tuberculosis is relatively easy to cure in the early stages, even with the use of one antibiotic. In the late stage it is impossible to cure the disease with the same type of treatment in the acute phase, said Dr. Ying Zhang when he visited the year NorVect conference.
-Dr. Ying Zhang is a professor at the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
-Two days after NorVect conference, published Dr. Ying Zhang's latest research Identification of new compounds with high activity against stationary phase Borrelia burgdorferi from the NCI compound collection.
2016
A Drug Combination Screen Identifies Drugs Active against Amoxicillin-Induced Round Bodies of In Vitro Borrelia burgdorferi Persisters from an FDA Drug Library
Jie Feng 1, Wanliang Shi 1, Shuo Zhang 1, David Sullivan 1, Paul G Auwaerter 2, Ying Zhang 1
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27242757/
Abstract
Under experimental stress conditions such as starvation or antibiotic exposure, Borrelia burgdorferi can develop round body forms, which are a type of persister bacteria that appear resistant in vitro to customary first-line antibiotics for Lyme disease. To identify more effective drugs with activity against the round body form of B. burgdorferi, we established a round body persister model induced by exposure to amoxicillin (50 μg/ml) and then screened the Food and Drug Administration drug library consisting of 1581 drug compounds and also 22 drug combinations using the SYBR Green I/propidium iodide viability assay. We identified 23 drug candidates that have higher activity against the round bodies of B. burgdorferi than either amoxicillin or doxycycline.
2022
Nitroxoline Drug Combinations Are More Active Than Lyme Antibiotic Combination and Can Eradicate Stationary-Phase Borrelia burgdorferi
Alvarez-Manzo, Hector S.1; Zhang, Yumin1; Zhang, Ying2,✉
https://journals.lww.com/imd/fulltext/2022/09000/nitroxoline_drug_combinations_are_more_active_than.7.aspx
Abstract
Lyme disease (LD), caused by Borrelia burgdorferi, is the most common vector-borne disease in the United States and Europe. Despite the standard 2–4 weeks' antibiotic treatment, approximately 10%–20% of patients will develop posttreatment LD syndrome, a condition that is poorly understood. One of the probable causes is thought to be the presence of B. burgdorferi persister forms that are not effectively killed by the current LD antibiotics. In this study, we evaluated nitroxoline, an antibiotic used to treat urinary tract infections, for its activity against a stationary-phase culture enriched with persister forms of B. burgdorferi. Nitroxoline was found to be more active than doxycycline and equally active as cefuroxime (standard LD antibiotics) against B. burgdorferi. Importantly, the nitroxoline two-drug combinations nitroxoline + cefuroxime and nitroxoline + clarithromycin, as well as the nitroxoline three-drug combination nitroxoline + cefuroxime + clarithromycin, were as effective as the persister drug daptomycin-based positive control three-drug combination cefuroxime + doxycycline + daptomycin, completely eradicating stationary-phase B. burgdorferi in the drug-exposure experiments and preventing regrowth in the subculture study. Future studies should evaluate these promising drug combinations in a persistent LD mouse model.
Mr. Duncan…. This is the missing research that should have been conducted early in the discovery phase of the disease but as we now know, all the eggs were put into the vaccine basket while a campaign was orchestrated to discredit the sick and disabled patient population along with the courageous clinicians attempting to help these patients. What has been deceitfully established here in the US is wreaking havoc globally. Example: Lyme disease: Australians 'being treated worse than a dog riddled with mange', Senator John Madigan says
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-11/lyme-disease-treatment-in-australia-criticised-by-john-madigan/7080708
This research is being suppressed as the disabled Lyme patient population around the globe remain sick indefinitely. (Three decades and counting)
Carl Tuttle