view of relapsing fever as an acute disease should be extended to include ...Lyme disease

georgia · medicine forum Guru Joined: 06 May 2005 Posts: 505

"......We therefore propose the brain to be a possible natural
reservoir of the spirochete. The view of relapsing fever as an acute
disease should be extended to include in some cases prolonged
persistence, a feature characteristic of the related spirochetal
infections Lyme disease and syphilis....."

ScienceDirect

Microbes and Infection

Copyright © 2006 Elsevier SAS All rights reserved.

http://tinyurl.com/o55uh
Persistent brain infection and disease reactivation in relapsing fever
borreliosis

Christer Larssona, Marie Anderssona, Jenni Pelkonenb, Betty P. Guoa,
Annika Nordstranda and Sven Bergströma, ,

aDepartment of Molecular Biology, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå,
Sweden
bDepartment of Medical Microbiology, Turku University, Turku, Finland

Received 19 January 2006; accepted 20 April 2006. Available online 30
May 2006.

Abstract
Relapsing fever, an infection caused by Borrelia spirochetes, is
generally considered a transient, self-limiting disease in humans. The
present study reveals that murine infection by Borrelia duttonii can be
reactivated after an extended time as a silent infection in the brain,
with no bacteria appearing in the blood and spirochete load comparable
to the numbers in an infected tick. The host cerebral gene expression
pattern is indistinguishable from that of uninfected animals,
indicating that persistent bacteria are not recognized by the immune
system nor cause noticeable tissue damage. Silent infection can be
reactivated by immunosuppression, inducing spirochetemia comparable to
that of initial densities. B. duttonii has never been found in any host
except man and the tick vector. We therefore propose the brain to be a
possible natural reservoir of the spirochete. The view of relapsing
fever as an acute disease should be extended to include in some cases
prolonged persistence, a feature characteristic of the related
spirochetal infections Lyme disease and syphilis.

Keywords: Borrelia duttonii; CNS; Immune privileged sites; Latency;
Reservoir; Immune evasion

Corresponding author. Tel.: +46 90 785 6726; fax: +46 90 772 630.

Google