Manganese is Lyme disease's double-edge sword

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/11/manganese-is-lyme-diseases-double-edge-sword

by gmays • 8 months ago

155 93 8 months ago

news.northwestern.edu

ggm• 8 months ago

And it's also a potent neurotoxin from a crude dr google lookup. Which is meaningless because they wouldnt bother exploring both sides of the deal if there wasn't a safe dose for humans which is bad for the bacteria, but it bears thinking about.

canadiantim2• 8 months ago

Sounds like starving Lyme of manganese is likely the better option that trying to overdose manganese. I don't know how effective a low-manganese diet or lifestyle would be though but it is very interesting.

donsupreme• 8 months ago

It appears that the body cannot produce manganese on its own it is an essential trace mineral that must be obtained from the diet.

I wonder if a prolonged water fast would do the job.

safeimp• 8 months ago

Trying to starve yourself of manganese would cause harm long before it affected Borrelia.

Aurornis9• 8 months ago

I don't know how effective a low-manganese diet or lifestyle would be though but it is very interesting.

You cannot achieve what the paper is discussing through diet or supplements.

The paper is hypothesizing that if a drug could target the components of B. burgdorferi that regulate manganese then that would kill it.

You cannot deprive the cells of manganese or overwhelm them through supplementation or restrictive diet. You would damage your own body long before reaching levels that killed the Lyme infection.

I really hope the alternative medicine people don't start abusing this headline to push diets and supplements.

bitexploder3• 8 months ago

Take antibiotics. They generally just work.

Aurornis9• 8 months ago

Nobody, in the article or otherwise, is suggesting that you can take manganese to fight Lyme. I don’t know where you got that, but I hope nobody thinks to try it.

The idea would be to look at all of the components that regulate manganese in B. burgdorferi and then look for drugs that might disrupt how they operate.

Any solution would act indirectly by disrupting manganese balance in a targeted manner directed at B. burgdorferi, not by flooding the whole body with manganese. The cells regulate their internal manganese anyway, so supplementing manganese wouldn’t force it to go into those cells anyway.

This is a PR release for some research that tries to stretch it into a promising treatment, but it's really more of an interesting discovery than a path to a new treatment.

Pet_Ant• 8 months ago

or otherwise

That's where you would be wrong. By the time you posted your comment there are already people hawking manganese bracelets on FaceBook as a cure for Lyme disease.

Aurornis9• 8 months ago

I'm seeing comments jumping to conclusions about taking manganese supplements or trying to starve yourself of manganese. These are dangerously wrong interpretations of the article.

Any interventions would have to be targeted directly at the B. burgdorferi to disrupt their internal regulation of manganese. It's a long shot used to make this research discovery sound more impressive, not an actual cure.

Your own body uses manganese for critical processes like your metabolism, critical brain functionality, and generating important antioxidants in your mitochondria (MnSOD, the same one mentioned inside of Lyme in the article).

Your body also regulates manganese absorption and excretion. Manganese deficiency is extremely rare outside of genetic conditions or other medical problems which interfere with this regulation. You can't really starve yourself of manganese by adjusting your diet or even by periods of fasting.

So if you're reading this and thinking you could defeat Lyme by starving yourself of manganese or overdosing on manganese, don't. That's not what this article is saying.

mlinhares• 8 months ago

Some of the comments here are the kind of stuff that makes you lose faith in humanity.

caycep• 8 months ago

this sort of case presentation re manganese brain toxicity pops up from time to time too:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4515672/

btilly5• 8 months ago

I agree that we should not simply self-treat by supplements or starving ourselves.

But you are dead wrong that interventions would need to be directly targeted at B. burgdorferi.

The standard and effective treatment for TB back in the 1950s was a combination therapy with Streptomycin, Isoniazid (INH), and PAS. The purpose of PAS was to create a low manganese environment in the body, which put stress on Mycobacterium tuberculosis - the bacteria that causes TB. This stress did not kill the bacteria by itself, but it did make it more vulnerable to the rest of the treatment. Because of this treatment, we have a lot of data showing how well people do with low manganese for a period of 1-2 years. (That was the time that this treatment required.) It wasn't pleasant (in particular it came with nausea), but it was definitely survivable.

If low manganese really does stress B. burgdorferi, then a similar combination is worth trying today. Better yet, this combination would not require the development of a new drug that needs FDA approval. It can be tried using only drugs that have been long approved, and which are already part of standard medical practice. (Granted, PAS is no longer used for TB. But it is the standard treatment for an excess of manganese.)

Aurornis9• 8 months ago

The purpose of PAS was to create a low manganese environment in the body,

Do you have a source for this?

I searched, but this recent paper on the mechanism of action for para-Aminosalicylic Acid (PAS) doesn't even mention manganese. It says it targets Dihydrofolate Reductase pathways: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5395024/

Searching for manganese and TB leads me to papers showing that manganese is an essential cofactor for Isoniazid's anti-TB action: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31319159/ but nothing about inducing low manganese states would be helpful or intentional.

So I don't think I'm dead wrong at all. Unless you have some sources, I don't think inducing manganese deficiency is actually the mechanism of action for PAS.

we have a lot of data showing how well people do with low manganese for a period of 1-2 years. (That was the time that this treatment required.) It wasn't pleasant (in particular it came with nausea), but it was definitely survivable.

Again, do you have any source for this? Preferably a source that indicates what manganese levels were reduced to during treatment?

The side effects are likely due to the 3 drugs in combination which have their own side effects, not low manganese (if it occurred).

EDIT: This commenter was making the same claim down thread and admitted they couldn't find a source for their claim: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45932379 It seems like they're making assumptions and presenting it as scientific fact.

hinkley2• 8 months ago

I don’t recall the chemical, but there was one mentioned on Everything is Tuberculosis. Someone discovered that aspirin makes TB metabolize more oxygen. Someone found a chemical with the opposite effect, suppressing instead of exciting the same pathway. Based on you’re description I don’t believe it was PAS though.

DANmode9• 8 months ago

Any interventions would have to be targeted directly at the B. burgdorferi

Alcohol suspension tincture of the following antibacterial herbs together, which target Lyme's various coinfections:

a. Cryptolepsis sanguinolenta

b. Polygonum cuspidatum (aka: Japanese knotweed)

c. Artemisia annua (aka: Sweet wormwood)

d. Uncaria tomentosa (aka: Cat’s claw)

Begin with one drop two times per day, increasing to tolerance/under advisement of your ND/MD, or wellness consultant.

jiggawatts• 8 months ago

Make sure to draw blood with leeches twice a week for the best effect, but only after burying a lock of your hair at midnight in the garden.

atombender2• 8 months ago

There is a big difference between believing something cured you, and publicly promoting something as a cure.

I see this all the time in various social media communities: For example, people with an autoimmune diseases that got better after eliminating dairy or starting to take willow bark supplements or whatever. The moment they see a benefit, they jump on Reddit or YouTube or whatever to promote it as a cure and tell everyone to do the same thing as them.

Promoting an extremely specific medical treatment without evidence larger than N=1 is both unethical and scientifically sloppy. At least you could bother to temper the advice with some caveats.

But apparently everyone on social media can be a medical authority these days, and giving out medical advice without a license is okay.

gamblor956• 8 months ago

For those wondering... this is just antibiotics. It worked because the biofilm created by Lyme disease doesn't have any resistance to this combination for the period of time the parent was using it. (The biofilm is the tricky part of treating Lyme disease.)

hinkley2• 8 months ago

I have heard that forensic analysis can see a distinct sufficient enough difference in bone manganese levels to identify the diet of a deceased person. Vegetarian diets end up with excess Mn stored in the bones. Like calcium, it’s needed and water soluble so you’ve gotta store it for a rainy day.

anon_cow11115• 8 months ago

Lyme desperately needs more attention and revised CDC guideline as it's becoming an epidemic in the northeast United States.

As and outdoor-hobbies type person I've had it 3 out of 4 previous years and have begun sourcing antibiotics from agricultural suppliers, or directly from India. Contrast this to my childhood in the same region, when tick-borne diseases were never even a blip on the radar. Supposedly this is because of climate change and much warmer winters allow deer ticks to spread rapidly.

From my own anecdotes and research, none of the traditional guidance is accurate:

-Never had a bullseye rash

-Never had a tick attached more than 24 hours

-When a tick was attached around 24 hours, infection rate was close to 50% and symptoms appeared within 10 days. Contrast to ~3% infection rate per cdc average.

...I suppose the sad irony here is that lyme is not getting attention because well... current generations never touch grass and the outbreak never appears as bad as it actually is.

methyl• 8 months ago

what were your symptoms?

anon_cow11115• 8 months ago

First year:

Very covid-like symptoms, to the point where I initially did a quick home covid test (or multiple tests if I remember) that was negative. Very distinct soreness around the crease of the hip/leg joint, probably a lymph gland.

Second year: exact same symptoms but less intense, still started antibiotics immediately

third: again same but less intense, I ignored it until general full-body joint pain occurred then immediately went on antibiotics, after a few months of that it started to clear up.

dzuc• 8 months ago

treat your clothing with permethrin

tiku• 8 months ago

Can't easily buy it in Europe. Some dog sprays have it, and stuff against wood bugs.

dylan6042• 8 months ago

-Never had a tick attached more than 24 hours
-When a tick was attached around 24 hours,

These comments directly contradict the other. Either you've never had a tick for 24 hours which means the second comment isn't true, or your first comment is not true.

anon_cow11115• 8 months ago

"Around 24 hours" means approximately 1 day. "More than 24 hours" means more than approximately 1 day. Please do not comment further unless you actually have something useful to add.

MangoToupe• 8 months ago

current generations never touch grass and the outbreak never appears as bad as it actually is.

I must say, I played in tall grass a lot as a child, catching insects and whatnot. Now I won't go anywhere near them without pretty serious protection, and I spend a great deal of time outdoors

toast0• 8 months ago

When I was young, tall grass was fine. But kids these days know to beware of Pokemons in the tall grass.

_zagj2• 8 months ago

...I suppose the sad irony here is that lyme is not getting attention because well... current generations never touch grass and the outbreak never appears as bad as it actually is.

The Morgellons outbreak is also much worse than it appears, or so I've heard.

sarchertech• 8 months ago

Did you get tested or did you diagnose yourself?

jandrewrogers• 8 months ago

The quantity of ticks in the eastern US is insane. I would be in favor of a serious look at eradicating them.

It isn’t too bad in the Mountain West comparatively in my experience, though you have some bad areas in California. I am an outdoorsy person. While I live in the western US my experiences in the woods of the eastern US still stick in my mind. In some areas it was literally crawling with ticks.

I currently live in Seattle. The western side of the Cascade Mountains are essentially devoid of ticks and no one knows why, it is a bit of a scientific mystery. Years of tromping through the bush and I’ve never seen one here, which is great. It does make me wonder if there is something in the ecosystem here that could be adapted to mitigate tick populations elsewhere.

CSSer• 8 months ago

Come down to Ojai valley. They'll be crawling all over you in no time. I grew up in the east. Most of the ticks we had at least couldn't even carry Lyme or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. California is wild.

ck22• 8 months ago

whenever I need a crash-course on a vitamin or mineral I check the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University for quality info written by and reviewed by Phds

https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/manganese

cactusplant7374• 8 months ago

Didn't Pauling fall prey to pseudoscience regarding Vitamin C? It's embarrassing to name an institute after him.

ck22• 8 months ago

yes he basically created the "vitamin C cult" of the time which is like the "vitamin D cult" of today

HOWEVER

Linus Pauling was also a legit brilliant chemist that won two nobel prizes and authored over 1000 papers

He created "quantum chemistry" and "molecular biology"

And was also a big peace activist

So he is forgiven for the Vitamin C stuff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling

meindnoch• 8 months ago

Lyme disease is basically a political weapon in today's America.

bazmattaz• 8 months ago

Huh? Explain

_zagj2• 8 months ago

Before you start supplementing with manganese, know that excessive manganese exposure (usually occupationally) is a recognized contributing risk factor for the development of a Parkinson's-like movement disorder:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5272970/

https://www.e-jmd.org/journal/view.php?number=335

phyzome• 8 months ago

Incidentally, if your body is either starved of or overloaded with manganese, it also suffers... :-)

kukkeliskuu4• 8 months ago

Lyme disease seems difficult to understand, as it has features that challenge some basic assumptions how diseases work in general.

One such assumption is that borreliosis is always the same. But researchers have been able to capture on video the morphosis of borreliosis spirochets to biofilm, and also spirochets hiding inside red blood cells. Antibiotics apparently only work on some of these forms, thus if you are using antibiotics to cure yourself, you need long-term antibiotics to permanently kill borreliosis.

There is actually a whole subculture of hobbyists investigating their own blood samples, prepared in certain way, to capture on video how the borreliosis emerges when the red blood cells die.

Lyme is actually not a single disease but a syndrome of borreliosis together with some co-infections. These co-infections appear to work synergistically together. If you reduce the amount of one of them, others increase in numbers, weakening you so that the original co-infection can make a comeback.

Also, sometimes curing borreliosis or co-infections can make you feel worse. This is called the Herxheimer reaction. One of the reasons for this seems to be that sometimes the symptoms are actually not due to the co-infections themselves, but toxins that are released in your body when the co-infections die within the body. Thus, the more effective the cure, the more toxins, and you feel worse.

If I remember correctly, there are around 40 subspecies of borreliosis. The tests can recognize only few of these.

I also remember reading about research where random people (without symptoms) were tested for certain types of borreliosis. If I remember correctly, around 15% tested positive. This means that actually many of us may carry these diseases, but at a level that does not cause symptoms. But if our body is weakened, these diseases may become active.

Manganese is Lyme disease's double-edge sword

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