PIPERCILLIN is FDA APPROVED
- Current ‘gold standard’ treatment does not work for up to 20% of the population and kills beneficial bacteria. (I have seen some of these 80% cured Lyme patients with missed Bartonella and Babesia).
- Scientists in this study below looked at roughly 500 FDA-approved compounds to test them against Lyme.
- Piperacillin effectively treats Lyme disease 100-times more effectively than doxycycline.
- Piperacillin can be this effective at a much lower dose than doxycycline.
- Piperacillin is in the same class as penicillin, effectively curing mice of Lyme disease at 100-times less than the effective dose of doxycycline.
- It also had “virtually no impact on resident gut microbes,” according to the study, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Doxycycline is not approved for use in young children — who are at the highest risk of tick bites, and therefore, of developing Lyme. This tends to be a parental decision and some feel modern better whiteners can bleach out gray stains in child teeth.
Brandon L. Jutras, who led the research. says: “… we are approaching an era of customized medicine, and we can potentially create a particular drug, or a combination to treat Lyme disease when others fail. The more we understand about the various strains and species of Lyme disease-causing Borrelia, the closer we get to a custom approach.” [Note he is not merely mentioning one Lyme species. There are dozens].
The study says that piperacillin, which has already been FDA-approved as a safe treatment for pneumonia, could also be a candidate for preemptive interventions, in which someone potentially exposed to Lyme (with a known deer tick bite) would receive a single-dose shot of the medication.
The team screened nearly 500 medicines in a drug library, they performed additional physiological, cellular and molecular tests to identify compounds that did not impact other bacteria.
They found that piperacillin exclusively interfered with the unusual cell wall synthesis pattern common to Lyme bacteria, preventing the bacteria from growing or dividing and ultimately leading to its death.
Historically, piperacillin has been administered as part of a two-drug cocktail to treat severe strep infections because strep can break down beta-lactams (piperacillin’s class of antibiotics) unless accompanied by tazobactam, which is an inhibitor of the enzyme that inactivates piperacillin. Jutras wondered if using the same two medications, rather than piperacillin alone, would be a more effective bacteria killer.
“Bacteria are clever,” Jutras said. “Strep [think PANDAS?] and some other bacteria combat antibiotics by secreting beta-lactamases that inactivate piperacillin. We found the approach is totally irrelevant in the context of Lyme disease and another way that makes piperacillin more specific. Adding the beta-lactamase inhibitor doesn’t improve the therapy because Lyme Borrelia don’t produce beta-lactamase, but the cocktail does negatively impact the microbiome by becoming more broadly functional against beneficial residents.”
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Source: Gabby ME, Bandara A, Outrata LM, Ebohon O, Ahmad SS, Dressler JM, McClune ME, Trimble RN, Mullen L, Jutras BL. A high-resolution screen identifies a preexisting beta-lactam that specifically treats Lyme disease in mice. Sci Transl Med. 2025 Apr 23;17(795):eadr9091. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adr9091. Epub 2025 Apr 23. PMID: 40267215; PMCID: PMC12258496.