Updates from the 2023 ILADS conference
The 2023 conference for the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, ILADS, was held in Boston in September. I had the honor of attending 3 days of lectures all focused on the problems associated with diagnosis and treatment of patients with tick borne illness, long COVID and associated conditions such as PANS and PANDAS. The conference covered a wide array of topics from the foundations of antibiotic and herbal antimicrobial therapies, to the use of machine learning (AI) to help develop new testing for lyme. One of the most exciting lectures of the conference was a research update on a new antibiotic called....
Hygromycin A has been successful and narrowly targeting lyme bacteria in mice and is slated to start human clinical trials in 2024. This is exciting because new antibiotics do not come along very often, the last new class of antibiotics was discovered was in 1984 according to Pew Charitable Trusts. The narrow range of Hygromycin A is also exciting, meaning that it does not kill many other bacteria like broad spectrum antibiotics do. If successful in human trials it may mean that we can use an antibiotic specific to Borrelia spp that would not cause much of the collateral damage and issues that we see with the current commonly used antibiotics.
The 2023 ILADS conference overall emphasized the interconnectedness of environmentally acquired illnesses (such as mold, and heavy metal toxicity), and opportunistic infections as complicating factors in treating lyme disease and long COVID. It presented research that establishes those connections and fostered conversation between physicians on how to unravel the layers that keep lyme patients sick.
Dr. Richard Horowitz, MD also presented his latest paper at the conference. It is an update on his Dapsone protocol for treating cases of Lyme disease when Bartonella is also present as a co-infection. The protocol presented is not suited for every patient and is in no way easy to do or inexpensive. It would never be a first step in treatment but the data presented in the paper is strong for those who qualified for treatment. The paper can be found here for those who are interested in the details. Link to paper.
ILADS mission as an organization is “the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme and other complex inflammatory diseases. ILADS promotes awareness and understanding of complex inflammatory disease through science, research and education.” Additionally they have developed guidelines for the treatment of acute lyme disease that, in my view, are more likely to prevent post-treatment lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS) than the current Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) guidelines. Link to the ILADS treatment guidelines.
I am grateful that I got to participate in this event and connect with the many other brilliant doctors who are passionate about diagnosing and treating lyme disease.
In health, Dr. Kathryn Boulter, ND
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