Therapy for Lyme disease

Lyme disease is an infectious disease transmitted by tick bites that can lead to reddening of the skin and organ damage. Antibiotics are often ineffective in advanced Lyme disease. Extracorporeal hyperthermia perfusion can help in this case.

What is Lyme disease?

 

Lyme disease is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. The infection usually occurs through a tick bite (wood tick), occasionally also through mosquitoes or horseflies. Immunity is not achieved through a passed infection. This is the most common tick-borne disease in Europe.

Typically, a ring-shaped reddening of the skin, the so-called migratory redness (erythema migrans), occurs on the original bite wound of the tick a few days after the bite. In the early stages, the infection can still be treated well with an antibiotic, as the pathogens are then still in the bloodstream.

Since the migratory redness only occurs in about 70% of cases, the infection can also be overlooked, so that the disease, which progresses in stages, passes unnoticed to the next higher stage and affects various organs such as the skin, the nervous system and joints.

Lyme disease is divided into three stages:

 

Stage I - local infection

Stage II - disseminated infection (spread throughout the entire organism)

Stage III - persistent infection (chronic and persistent)

Common symptoms

 

  • chronic fatigue (chronic fatigue syndrome)
  • Neuropathy pain throughout the body
  • Cramps
  • Extreme night sweats
  • Cardiac arrhythmias
  • Concentration disorders
  • Forgetfulness
  • Arthritis in knee or ankle joints, hands and shoulder joints

HOW WE CAN HELP

 

The treatment of choice is to take antibiotics, which, however, can be ineffective, especially from stage II onwards, and can thus lead to high and long-lasting suffering.

Hyperthermia therapy offers an alternative, as the Borrelia bacteria are known to die off above a temperature of 41.6 °Celsius.

 

Hyperthermia is a therapy method with which fever can be simulated by a controlled increase in body temperature. Fever is the oldest known endogenous defence system, which can be used to disrupt the metabolism of harmful pathogens (e.g. viruses) and the structural composition of their proteins. The procedure is to be evaluated as an alternative therapy.