successfully suppress and evade the human immune system. Therefore, they
cause persistent infections with immune-related long-term sequelae.
Also confirmation of Sapi's finding on biofilm..
Neither strain died in the experiment. We observed a form of biofilm-formation
of large Borrelia burgdorferi bundles (see cover; unpublished), which likely
served to protect Borrelia bacteria from complement. This may be analogous
to attack of the complement system on tumors, where the outer cell-layers are
attacked, but the inner layers protected (128). This mechanism has also been
documented elsewhere (76). MMPs (68, 75, 129) enable the spirochetes to
invade tissues and when they are able to grow into a larger population, they
may be able to shield each other by forming a form of biofilm. Because there
was a very large amount of bacteria, the majority of the cells were not
attacked. In a physiological sense this may partially explain the difficulty in treating persistent long-term infections.
