Sorry for sounding so harsh. I do greatly appreciate your efforts to keep the information out there on the net about Lyme on the straight and narrow. The only way we're going to solve these considerable problems of post-treatment Lyme that people are having is if we keep the research and the dialogue about the research honest.
I thought Duncan was extremely rude to you and there is just no excuse for that kind of behavior. I was going to say as much, but the anger about the FDA and the CDC dragging their feet over verifying Sapi's culture test and/or creating a culture test of their own just overtook me.
I'm sorry I didn't say anything. Well, I have now. But the issue is still a burning one - where is our culture test to put this absurd persistence argument to rest already? I'm tired of it. It's holding all progress up. I don't believe Lyme persists. I believe antibiotics are very good and quick about killing it off and I want to move on from this persistence rut and find out what on God's Green Earth is really wrong with all of us!
Even if there are some remaining persisters (even Dial soap can only claim that it kills 99% of all bacteria!) they are most likely either dormant, attenuated, or both and either way, in that state, they are not interacting with the immune system, so they can't possibly be the source of all our post-treatment misery!
Dr. Sapi's culture recipe is not a trade secret as Henry claims. She submitted a paper to the public domain for all to see exactly what her culture base is made of - including the all-important ratios!
Here, take a look:
http://www.medsci.org/v10p0362.htm
Look under the section "Culture Protocol". Anyone who wishes may repeat this experiment. That means you, Henry, hv808ct, FDA, IDSA, and CDC.
Culture protocol
Blood samples (~30 ml /patient) were collected in the following tubes: 9.0 ml peripheral blood in a 15.0 ml polypropylene Falcon tube containing 5 ml BSK-H, two samples consisting of 9.0 ml peripheral blood in 10.0 ml red top (no additive) Vacutainer tube, or Vacutainer tubes containing EDTA (purple top).
Blood samples were transported to the laboratory overnight at room temperature and upon receipt they were allowed to sit undisturbed for several hours at room temperature to allow serum separation.
The serum was divided into eight starter cultures for each clinical sample and mixed with modified BSK-H media (mBSK-H) - four in the standard 15 ml glass tube (13 ml final volume) and four in the small 2ml cryo tubes (1.8 ml final volume) as summarized in Table 2.
Cultures were incubated at 34o C with 5% CO2 and 100% humidity. The lids of all culture tubes were closed loosely to allow limited gas exchange between the culture medium and the environment. Starter cultures were harvested after 6 days and used for either immunocytochemical studies or to seed a long-term culture.
Long-term cultures were established by combining and directly transferring cells and media from culture tubes to a Coplin jar with an additional 15 ml mBSK-H media (total volume of 34 ml), a 5 μg rifampicin disc (BD Scientific) and 2 collagen coated slides (Rat-tail type I; BD Scientific) and maintained through 16 weeks at 34oC with 5% CO2 and 100% humidity.
After 8 weeks, one slide was checked under dark field microscopy and used for polyclonal anti-Borrelia antibody detection analysis. If the fluorescent antibody result was negative at 8 weeks of culture, another collagen coated slide was placed in the Coplin jar and half of the culture media (~17 ml) was replaced with fresh mBSK-H medium and the culture was incubated for an additional 8 weeks.
And there are even more details in the paper. Check under "Optimization of BSK-H media" and then a little further down, "Establishment of Long-term culture environment".
So, come on! Quit yer bitchin' and do something already!
