Under attack: Researchers shed light on how Lyme disease infects body
Invasion of Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb) in a tissue-engineered dermal microvessel model. a) Human dermal microvascular endothelial cells (HDMECs) seeded into the microfluidic device in collagen type I extracellular matrix. b) HDMECs form a confluent monolayer after 2 days under shear stress (4 dyne cm−2). c) Inoculation of GFP-tagged Bb into the dermal microvessel. d) Following inoculation, Bb migrate from the injection site. e) Fluorescence images of dermal microvessels at 0 and 48 h following inoculation with fluorescently labeled Bb (green). HDMECs (magenta). Flow was maintained at 4 dyne cm−2. f) Fluorescence images in the vicinity of the inoculation site (see red box in panel (e)) over time. g) Heat map showing quantification of Bb in the perivascular region along the vessel over time. Imaging was performed at the equatorial plane of the microvessel with a depth of field of ≈4.3 µm. The Bb concentration was obtained in a region within 20 µm of the endothelium at the equatorial plane on both sides of the vessel (i.e., anterior and posterior to the inoculation site). The location along the microvessel is relative to the point closest to the inoculation site and extends about 3 mm in both upstream and downstream directions. Credit: Advanced Science (2022). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202204395

An estimated 476,000 Americans are exposed to the disease each year, which can cause a wide range of symptoms, including a rash, joint pain, and brain damage. It's known that Borrelia burgdorferi enters the body through the bite of a deer tick, but how it gets to a person's bloodstream has not been fully understood.

Engineers may have found the answer. They learned that B. burgdorferi uses trial and error to find and slip through tiny openings in the lining of blood vessels. They are able to hitch a ride on the bloodstream throughout the body. Today's results are in Advanced Science.

The team leader, Peter Searson, a professor in the Whiting School of Engineering's Department of Materials Science and Engineering and core researcher, said that if the bacteria did not find one of the junctions on the first try, they continued to search. Once they get into the blood vessels, they are in circulation in a matter of seconds.

The team used a high-resolution optical technique to observe the movement of the model, which was injected with a three-dimensional model of a human blood vessel. The tissue at the original bite site was an obstacle for the spiral-shapedbacteria to overcome, but little effort was needed for them to enter the bloodstream.

Credit: Johns Hopkins University

Searson said that they created a model of dermal tissue to study the behavior and mechanisms of dissemination.

In North America, Europe, and Asia, there are many cases of lyme disease, and though antibiotics are effective, some patients experience long-term symptoms. Understanding how B. burgdorferi is spread throughout the body could help inform treatments to preventbacteria from entering other tissues and organs.

The kind of human tissue-engineering model we created can be broadly applied to visualize the details of dynamic processes associated with other vector-borne diseases.

There is a visualization of the dynamics of invasion and intervasation of the Bacterium that causes the disease. The book is called 10.1002/advs.

Journal information: Advanced Science

dermal microvessel modelAdvanced SciencedermalLyme disease
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