From the California Lyme group:
Now, ATCC is sponsoring an on-line photo contest.
Holly Ahern, an associate professor of microbiology at SUNY Adirondack (in New York state) submitted a photo of a Lyme biofilm to the contest. The photo was taken by Bob Myers.
If the photo wins, says Ahern, “This will be the first time that Borrelia’s ability to produce a biofilm will be recognized by an international community of scientists. Hard to believe when you look at the picture that there’s any doubt … but, there is.”
So please...vote for the “Biofilm of Borrelia burgdorferi B31- pic.
I can't imagine the SUNY tenure committee will be impressed by this effort to stuff a ballot box. Is she trying to win that ATCC iPad or does she really think that fuzzy blue picture is some kind of proof of “chronic” Lyme disease as a clinical entity? Almost any microbe will form a film or matrix when grown in static culture. There’s no doubt that B. burgdorferi will too.
The only doubt is a role for biofilms in patients with Lyme disease. But there’s no evidence for such structures in Lyme disease—except maybe from an untreated arthritis case that results in a snyovectomy. Otherwise one might readily find B. burgdorferi growing on heart values, the gut epithelium, synovial membranes, and all those indwelling catheters Lyme quacks like to implant in their foolish patients. This is just more activist fantasy about why they can’t seem to get better. (Hint: it’s not Lyme disease.)
It should be noted that the photo shows a colony of Borrelia burgdorferi after one month of culture in liquid BSK-H medium. Since BSK-H medium contains 6% rabbits serum the proteins of which denature with time at incubation temperatures, most likely what one is seeing are borrelial cells attached to denatured rabbit serum protein. So, this is probably an artifact and not a true biofilm in which the biofilm is an product that is ACTIVELY SECRETED by a bacterial cell. An analysis of the biofilm is needed to determine its origin.
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