So
New - A retrospective on Biofilms of Borrelia and future
Post
by inmacdonald » July 24th, 2013, 5:22 pm
In
the Original Release of UNDER OUR SKIN [ UOS]
MacDonald's
parting remarks are about the exciting future of Biofilms of
Borrelia. (earlier posting about Dr MacDonald from UOS here )
At
the time of filming, we already had the proof in hand, but we had to
get it Published.
We
had to get it past an Editor in Chief of a Journal with good academic
standing in the world of Medical publishing.
We
knew that we would not succeed with the Journal of Infectious
Disease
or
Clinical Microbiology and infectious Disease or with the newsletter
to the membership of the IDSA.
The
most important Milestone happened in November 2012 with the long
awaited publication of
the
PLOS ONE article on In Vitro Biofilms of borrelia burgdorferi.
[We
had long since discussed in video interviews, in the year 2006 , and
in the film UOS that Biofilms would be the Next Big thing.]
It
took 6 years of tedious and politically gut wrenching work to get
THE
article into a Prestige journal, PLOS ONE,
The
acceptance for the article to be published was, like some births, not
an easy delivery.
The
original manuscript reviews required mandatory
revisions.
Non-negotiable
revisions.
The
most onerous of these was the directive by the Editorial staff to
REMOVE any and All language from the manuscript which connected the
significance of Biofilms of borrelia ..... to Human medicine, Human
disease, and to Lyme disease ,in specific , and to attitudes toward
the proper treatment of Lyme disease and related Borrelia infections.
These
demands were acceded to.
Why
would PhD reviewers be at all interested in MD type Stuff?
Here
the existing politics provide an answer.
None
of the 3 reviewers were IDSA aligned persons.
All
of the Reviewers, from best that we could determine, were European
Microbiologists with special life experience in Biofilm biology of
other non-borrelia microbes.
The
sticky wicket about biofilms is that Biofilms of the Infectious type
are
ALWAYS
a marker of CHRONIC INFECTION.
Chronic
Lyme borreliosis was then , was in 2006, and is in 2013 a much
disputed entity.
Allowing
Biofilms of Borrelia to attain academic respectability , by allowing
publication of the Sapi et al In Vitro Borrelia biofilm article, the
conceptual link by a microscopic structure {biofilm of borrelia
community}
overturned
all of the objections to the impossibility of Chronic borreliosis
as
a Validated Entity.
So
, ....did we ask a good question,..... as the Nobel laureate Izzy
Singer once remarked...?
Yes!
And
So, the next "good question" was .....Are there borrelia
biofilms in living organisms or,.....are borrelia biofilms just a
Test tube curiosity?
Two
weeks after the PLOS ONE publication of the Sapi biofilm In vitro
Paper,
came
the announcement from the Sapi Group in West Haven Conn at the
University of New Haven, that INDEED, Borrelia biofilms were detected
under the microscope in a human skin biopsy from Europe from a
patient with cutaneous borreliosis.
And,
Sapi's group started to look into the Tick gut, to see if Borrelia
biofilms are there in the living tick, as a measure to maintain the
borrelia through a period of starvation, before it bites its next
human victim. This work has also been Paradigm Shifting.
Now
to look ahead to the Paradigm shifts yet to come.
MacDonald
has announced that the PLAQUES of Alzheimer's disease are Biofilm
communities.
That
is about as chronic and in the human Body and Disease associated and
disease producing as any biofilm professional could ever want to have
on a Resume.
How
do we Attack and remove biofilms?
That
is another tough question.
Biofilms
are fortress like communities which are from inception designed
to
survive
all manner of attack, including high dose long term antibiotic
therapies through IV lines surgically sewn into the veins of sick
patients who require long term antibiotic therapy.
So
Antibiotic Therapy is not a panacea for eliminating biofilms of any
microbe
But,
Just
before Dr. Bill Costerton passed away from Pancreatic cancer in
2012,
he
recorded a video interview on You Tube. In that interview he
discussed many things about biofilm biology. Costerton,as the author
of many peer reviewed articles on biofilms of many species of
microbes, was ideally situated to Editorialize about ALL THINGS
BIOFILM>
One
of the last topics which he introduced at the end of the video was
the concept that Ultrasound energy , correctly administered to Test
tube biofilm communities actually breaks up the protective Matrix
[Green goo] and opens up the heretofore protected Bacteria to the
action of antibiotics, which can then get to the bugs and kill
them.
So
there is more than a "vague new direction" for killing
Biofilm infections.
Costerton
has built us an 8 lane highway.
More
about this later.
I
made the promise in UOS that biofilms would be the Next Great
Thing.
That
promise has been kept, and more great things will accrue to Lyme
borreliosis patients because of Basement laboratory
investigations.
Best
to you, as always,
Alan
MacDonald MD
July24,2013
Endocarditis
is, and always has been, a BIOFILM infection of the human heart
valves.
So
a timely "so new" in the world of infectious disease,
brought to you by
Biofilm
[always chronic] Infections.
Think
about it!
