A Review of Antibiotic-Tolerant Persisters and Their Relevance to Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Symptoms

Five clinical trials show that prolonged antibiotic therapy has no clear and lasting benefit in relieving post-treatment Lyme disease symptoms, a condition often called “chronic Lyme disease”1-4; no evidence of active infection was found in any of these studies by culture or molecular methods. Despite such findings, as well as the fact that evidence of harm was unambiguous,2,3 some still insist that these symptoms are due to a persistent Borrelia burgdorferi infection that can be eliminated only by several months of additional treatment with different kinds of antibiotics, given either singly or in combination.