Yale researchers found a protein that helps shield hosts from the tickborne spirochete infection that triggers Lyme disease, a discovery they revealed in the journal PLOS Pathogens Nov. 11 that will better detect and cure this infection.
The most prevalent vector-borne disease in North America is Lyme Disease, spread by ticks contaminated with Borrelia burgdorferi spirochete. The disease's path differs between people, with moderate symptoms quickly treated by antibiotics being encountered by the majority. However, in certain untreated Lyme cases, the infection may spread to the heart, limbs, nervous system, and other organs.
The Yale team unveiled over 1,000 human genes in yeast for the analysis and examined their associations with 36 B samples. There's burgdorferi. They find that, when exposed to bacteria, one enzyme, Peptidoglycan Recognition Protein 1 (PGLYRP1), serves as an early warning signal to the immune system. Mice that lacked PGLYRP1 had much higher amounts of B when introduced to the Lyme spirochete. Burgdorferi than mice with protein and displayed signs of malfunction of the immune system, the researchers say.
"Stimulating the ability of people to make more of this protein could help fight infection," said Yale's Erol Fikrig, the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and professor of epidemiology (microbial diseases) and of microbial pathogenesis and co-corresponding author of the study.
Fikrig and his colleagues are also studying whether individuals with higher PGLYRP1 levels could be less vulnerable to B infection. Burgdorferi, which will further understand why there are better effects for certain affected people.
Experts made a better system to study emerging tickborne disease
Tickborne illnesses are on the rise, and one in the United States and Canada is emerging in particular. A disease that may trigger a variety of symptoms and even death is human babesiosis. One of the parasites triggering human babesiosis is little known, but a team of Yale-led researchers have established a novel method for researching it. They said their study is promising to contribute to more successful detection and improved therapies.
Though scientists in mice and hamsters studied the parasite Babesia duncani, the study was minimal because it is costly and the animals sometimes succumb to the disease. The research team built a method to examine the parasite in human red blood cells to address these difficulties. They moved the pathogens from hamster red blood cells to in vitro cultured human red blood cells. This first-ever, continuous Babesia duncani in vitro method allowed them to explore the parasite over time in human red blood cells and research its biology.
There were some primary results mentioned by the writers. They reported that Babesia duncani in human red blood cells would multiply rapidly, doubling in less than 24 hours. Four current medications that are used to cure the disease have also been studied and shown that the infection has low resistance to these therapies.
The study is "a tipping point in the research on this organism," said senior author Choukri Ben Mamoun, associate professor of medicine.
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