ArticlePloS one2012
Persistence of Borrelia burgdorferi in rhesus macaques following antibiotic treatment of disseminated infection.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 157 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
157 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 198 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cutaneous Lyme borreliosis: Guideline of the German Dermatology Society.German medical science : GMS e-journal · 2017Guideline
- Xenodiagnosis to Search for Borrelia burgdorferi After Antibiotic Treatment of Lyme Disease: A Prospective Cohort Study.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2026Trial
- Xenodiagnosis to detect Borrelia burgdorferi infection: a first-in-human study.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2014Trial
- Epidemiology, diagnosis and emerging therapies for Lyme disease of the Northern Hemisphere.International journal of emergency medicine · 2026Review
- Arresting spirochetes: nonthermal extremely low-frequency electromagnetic field exposure suppressesFrontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Probable European-profileFrontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Silent Carriers: The Role of Rodents in the Emergence of Zoonotic Bacterial Threats.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Article
- Targeting the SARS-CoV-2 reservoir in long COVID.The Lancet. Infectious diseases · 2025Review
- Article
- Lactate dehydrogenase is the Achilles' heel of Lyme disease bacteriumbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- A pilot study of disulfiram for individuals with persistent symptoms despite prior antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- Hitchhiker's Guide toJournal of bacteriology · 2024Review
- Evidence for the Presence ofMicroorganisms · 2024Article
- Article
- Suppression of host humoral immunity byInfection and immunity · 2024Article
- Dysautonomia following Lyme disease: a key component of post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome?Frontiers in neurology · 2024Review
- Current and emerging approaches for eliminatingFrontiers in microbiology · 2024Review
- Fibroblast growth factor receptor inhibitors mitigate the neuropathogenicity ofFrontiers in immunology · 2024Article
- Development of Organoids to Study Infectious Host Interactions.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2024Article
97 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
- Erratum issued
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
14 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The persistence of symptoms in Lyme disease patients following antibiotic therapy, and their causes, continue to be a matter of intense controversy. The studies presented here explore antibiotic efficacy using nonhuman primates. Rhesus macaques were infected with B. burgdorferi and a portion received aggressive antibiotic therapy 4-6 months later. Multiple methods were utilized for detection of residual organisms, including the feeding of lab-reared ticks on monkeys (xenodiagnosis), culture, immunofluorescence and PCR. Antibody responses to the B. burgdorferi-specific C6 diagnostic peptide were measured longitudinally and declined in all treated animals. B. burgdorferi antigen, DNA and RNA were detected in the tissues of treated animals. Finally, small numbers of intact spirochetes were recovered by xenodiagnosis from treated monkeys. These results demonstrate that B. burgdorferi can withstand antibiotic treatment, administered post-dissemination, in a primate host. Though B. burgdorferi is not known to possess resistance mechanisms and is susceptible to the standard antibiotics (doxycycline, ceftriaxone) in vitro, it appears to become tolerant post-dissemination in the primate host. This finding raises important questions about the pathogenicity of antibiotic-tolerant persisters and whether or not they can contribute to symptoms post-treatment.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.