Statins may stop spread of Lyme disease: study

Statins, drugs that are normally used to lower cholesterol, may stop the spread of Lyme disease, researchers including one of Indian-origin have found.
"One of the questions we are asking is how Lyme disease can be stopped before it is transmitted from ticks to humans," said Janakiram Seshu from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) in the US.
Most cases of Lyme disease come from ticks that bite humans after they have acquired the agent of Lyme disease from infected animals, referred to as reservoir hosts, researchers said.
If the burden of infection is reduced in the reservoir hosts, it can be predicted that the chances for ticks to acquire the Lyme disease pathogen will be lower presumably leading to a reduction in the number of cases of human Lyme disease, they said.

Researchers found that statins, medications usually used to lower cholesterol, can reduce the burden in mice and can therefore be exploited to reduce the number of Lyme disease bacteria acquired by the feeding ticks.
They believe that this could be one of the many strategies to lower the incidence of Lyme disease by restricting bacterial survival at its source.

"We have figured out that there is one enzyme in the Lyme disease bacteria that is essential for creating its cell wall, which would allow the Lyme disease bacteria to live and cause infection," said Seshu.
"We discovered that this enzyme can be inhibited by statins, which means that one class of drugs could reduce the number of infectious bacteria in the reservoir hosts," he added.

While the use of statins does not spell a complete elimination of Lyme disease, it has the potential to drastically reduce the number of new cases, researchers said.
The findings were published in the journal Microbes and Infection.