On average, 1,200 Americans are given a Lyme disease diagnosis each day. Even after treatment, some of those patients still experience side effects.
Brandon Jutras, an associate professor at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and a faculty member of the Fralin Life sciences Institute, recently received$ 2.7 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases( National Institutes of Health ) to investigate the factors that contribute to the disease’s protracted prognosis.
We’re attempting to comprehend why and how some patients respond to therapy differently from others by combining a number of cutting-edge molecular techniques with both bacterial and host genetics. Our two-pronged strategy examines this issue from both perspectives: What specific chemical characteristics of the bacterium’s cell wall are to blame for symptoms, and what genetic factors from the host-response side contribute to sustained pathology.
Brandon Jutras is an affiliate faculty member at the Center for Emerging, Zoonotic, and Arthropod-borne Pathogens as well as the department of biochemistry’s principal investigator.
Jutras had previously learned that:
- A portion of the disease-causing agent’s cell wall is released into the environment.
- Patients can still find this molecule months after receiving antibiotic treatment.
- The bacterium that causes Lyme disease moves more easily thanks to a highly unusual modification in its protective molecular bag.
- and that the cell wall alone has the ability to produce symptoms resembling those that patients experience.
This study expands on earlier findings and will ascertain what about the cell wall causes illness in patients as well as new approaches, such as monoclonal antibody therapy, to enhance the health of Lyme disease patients after conventional therapies have failed.
Mecaila McClune, a key member of the research team and graduate student in the Jutras lab, said,” We recognize this is an issue and that patients have these long-term symptoms, but we don’t know why.” My research aims to understand what is happening and how we can treat the disease’s long-term effects, which will enhance quality of life in the future.
Prior assistance from the Global Lyme Alliance and Bay Area Lime Foundation helped to facilitate these new studies, which are still being actively collaborated with by GlycoMIP, the University of Virginia, and the Medical College of Wisconsin.