A new study gives hope that an effective treatment for Lyme disease may be available in the future. The new treatment involves the drugs cefotaxime and azlocillin. Share on Pinterest New research finds a promising new compound in the fight against Lyme disease, which can result from a tick bite. The new paper appears in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. Lyme disease affects nearly 300,000 people a year in the United States and around 230,000 people a year in Europe, according to an article in the Journal of Public Health. Bacteria belonging to the group Borrelia burgdorferi cause Lyme disease. Most people develop it after being bitten by a tick that carries the bacteria. Approximately 60–80% of people with Lyme disease develop a circular red skin rash called erythema migrans around the infected tick bite, and some also develop flu-like symptoms. Most people develop the rash within 4 weeks of being bitten, but it can appear up to 3 months afterward.

The need for a new treatment Doctors routinely treat Lyme disease using tetracycline antibiotics, but between 10–20% of people with the disease later develop symptoms of fatigue, pain in their muscles, joints or nerves, and cognitive impairment. These symptoms can continue for months or even years after their initial infection. Researchers have suggested that this may because of drug-tolerant ‘persisters,’ a group of bacterial cells that survive the initial dose of antibiotics. “Some researchers think this may be due to drug-tolerant bacteria living in the body and continuing to cause disease,” Jayakumar Rajadas, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine and director of the Biomaterials and Advanced Drug Delivery Laboratory at the Stanford School of Medicine in California. “Others believe it’s an immune disorder caused by bacteria during the first exposure, which causes a perpetual inflammation condition. Whatever the cause, the pain for patients is still very real.” Now, a team of researchers from Stanford University in the U.S. and Loyola College in India set out to investigate whether two different antibiotic drugs, cefotaxime and azlocillin, could prove more effective at killing B. burgdorferi in the early stages of the disease than the currently prescribed antibiotic doxycycline.