Borrelia burgdorferi, or Lyme disease

[Pat Thielen]

Here is a photo I took of Borrelia burgdorferi, or, the agent that is the cause of Lyme disease. This photo is magnified 40x using dark field lighting. I was very impressed at how large these bacteria are; they are very easily seen at a total magnification of 400x -- These are some of the largest bacteria I've seen to date. These guys are especially nasty as Lyme disease is a very terrible illness if not caught and treated right away. Because it can mimic other illnesses it is still often misdiagnosed, although I think they are getting better at it these days. I had a friend who died due to complications from Lyme disease; she had been misdiagnosed for many years thinking she was suffering from MS. By the time it was properly diagnosed it was too late.

Is it just me, or do these things just look especially nasty? There is just something about them...

Let me know what you think of the image. This is the first image I've made that includes a scale bar so you can get an idea of the size of these beasties.

[apochronaut]

I have a fair amount of experience with this organism, since I have it....and I've done a fair amount of microscopy related to it as well.
The relationship between M.S. and B.B. is one of those ongoing parallels that at this point, not enough is known. For sure, there are cases where M.S. patients have responded to certain anti-biotic therapies and it looks promising that a burgeoning death sentence condition, may in fact have a microbiological origin. Increasingly, this is happening; where conditions that have been categorized as of unknown etiology, turn out to be conditions of the microbiome. The 19th century microscopists were correct in many cases, yet ignored for decades while the biochemists and behaviourists took the spotlight. The latest one of interest, is S.I.D.S., where E.Coli and mutations of Staph. have been implicated. We've bred some pretty capable doozies, with our anti-biotic obsession of the last half of the 20th. In agriculture as well, which I know better.
Anyway; I'm curious about the picture. ...Is that a dried out blood sample?

[Pat Thielen]

I have a fair amount of experience with this organism, since I have it....and I've done a fair amount of microscopy related to it as well.
The relationship between M.S. and B.B. is one of those ongoing parallels that at this point, not enough is known. For sure, there are cases where M.S. patients have responded to certain anti-biotic therapies and it looks promising that a burgeoning death sentence condition, may in fact have a microbiological origin. Increasingly, this is happening; where conditions that have been categorized as of unknown etiology, turn out to be conditions of the microbiome. The 19th century microscopists were correct in many cases, yet ignored for decades while the biochemists and behaviourists took the spotlight. The latest one of interest, is S.I.D.S., where E.Coli and mutations of Staph. have been implicated. We've bred some pretty capable doozies, with our anti-biotic obsession of the last half of the 20th. In agriculture as well, which I know better.
Anyway; I'm curious about the picture. ...Is that a dried out blood sample?

I'm actually not as I bought the slide from Caroline Scientific. So, I really don't know where they got the sample from. I also don't know how they culture this and so I don't know if they are seen in culture media. What I did notice on the slide is the bacteria seem to clump around what appear to be holes, which makes me wonder if this is from a tissue culture. If anyone has any thoughts on the subject I'd be very happy to hear them!

[apochronaut]

They don't show in such profusion in blood serum, hardly at all, so I wondered. B 31 is the commonly used lab strain and mouse tissue culture is a common method of breeding them, so that could be mouse tissue. Detection of suspected infections is a problem using the B 31 strain because most infected individuals are building immunity to a very different strain, so false negatives show up almost as the norm because immunity is the standard basis of diagnosis, still. Microscopy is seldom used as a tool for diagnosis.

Here are a couple from my blood , drawn about 4 years ago. They usually are around 10-15 microns long and .5 or less wide. This was about 4 years after the infection took place.
1) a couple of individuals , heavily cropped. Probably about 2000X on your screen.

2)
I have a sequence of images following one as it attached itself to a red corpuscle and became more or less invisible. If you knew it was there, you could see it but it really could be confused with the normal topography of the corpuscle. I doubt if most microscopists coming across that with an average microscope would see it. I was using DF and a 1.32 planapo objective and had witnessed the spirochaete move towards the corpuscle and more or less climb aboard over a period of about 12 minutes and still it was hard to see, once it had settled on. It may be why they are so hard to find in blood. I can't see a BF microscope imaging them at all. An abbreviated set of 4 images.