Lyme disease is exceedingly difficult to treat, due to its well-known shape-shifting (pleomorphic) abilities, with conventional antibiotics often failing to produce a long-term cure. Could the commonly used natural plant, Stevia rebaudiana, better known as stevia, provide a safer and more effective means to combat this increasingly prevalent infection?
A preclinical study in 2015 that whole stevia leaf extract possesses exceptional antibiotic activity against the exceedingly difficult-to-treat pathogen Borrelia burgdorferi (B. burgdorferi), which is known to cause Lyme disease.
The study found that “Stevia whole leaf extract, as an individual agent, was effective against all known morphological forms of B. burgdorferi.”
B. burgdorferi has a complex life cycle, and can exist in radically different forms: spirochetes, spheroplast (or L-form, which lacks a cell wall), round bodies or cyst form (which allows for dormancy and escaping polymerase chain reaction detection), and highly antibiotic-resistant biofilms.
This pleomorphic property makes conventional treatment exceptionally difficult because, while some conventional antibiotics are effective against forms with a cell wall such as spirochetes, they’re ineffective against those without a cell wall. This enables B. burgdorferi to change form to evade eradication through conventional means.
Also, biofilm formation creates a significant barrier against most conventional antibiotics, even when used in combination, and has been recently suggested to be the most effective mechanism of resistance.
The researchers directly compared an alcohol extract of a whole stevia leaf product commonly found on the U.S. retail market to conventional antibiotics and assessed their respective abilities to kill the various forms of Borrelia burgdorferi, including so-called persister forms.
The study pointed out that, according to the CDC, about 10 percent to 20 percent of Lyme disease patients treated with antibiotics for the recommended two to four weeks experience adverse health effects such as fatigue, pain, or joint and muscle aches.
In some of these patients, the adverse effects last longer than six months.
These patients are often labeled with “chronic Lyme disease,” or “post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome.” While the adverse effects of antibiotics, including their destruction of beneficial microbes in the gut, may account for this syndrome, another possibility is that the drugs drive antibiotic-resistant forms of the disease deeper into the body, resulting in enhanced disease-associated malaise.
Given the well-known challenges of eradicating B. burgdorferi through conventional antibiotics, the researchers explored the potential for stevia as an antimicrobial.
Stevia isn’t normally considered an antimicrobial agent, but all plants possess built-in phytochemical defense systems which protect them against infection, and by consuming them, the body can sometimes harness and benefit from these attributes. The researchers elaborate on this point:
“The leaf extract of Stevia possesses many phytochemicals, which include austroinullin, beta-carotene, dulcoside, niacin, rebaudioside, riboflavin, steviol, stevioside, and thiamin with known antimicrobial properties against many pathogens. The role of these compounds is mainly to protect the plant from microbial infection and adverse environmental conditions.”
The researchers explored stevia’s potential effectiveness against B. burgdorferi cultures, comparing it to three common antibiotics sometimes used to treat Lyme disease: doxycycline, cefoperazone, and daptomycin, as well as their combinations.
The study results were summarized as follows:
“The susceptibility of the different forms was evaluated by various quantitative techniques in addition to different microscopy methods. The effectiveness of Stevia was compared to doxycycline, cefoperazone, daptomycin, and their combinations. Our results demonstrated that Stevia had a significant effect in eliminating B. burgdorferi spirochetes and persisters. Sub-culture experiments with Stevia and antibiotic-treated cells were established for 7 and 14 days yielding, no and 10 percent viable cells, respectively, compared to the above-mentioned antibiotics and antibiotic combination. When Stevia and the three antibiotics were tested against attached biofilms, Stevia significantly reduced B. burgdorferi forms. Results from this study suggest that a natural product such as Stevia leaf extract could be considered as an effective agent against B. burgdorferi.”
Notably, the study found that the most antibiotic-resistant form of B. burgdorferi, the biofilm form, actually increased in mass when individual antibiotics were administered. Stevia, on the other hand, reduced the biofilm mass on both tested surfaces (plastic and collagen) by about 40 percent.
It’s also interesting to note that stevioside, a glycoside derived from the stevia plant, by itself wasn’t found to be an effective antimicrobial agent against B. burgdorferi; nor did it have any effect on resistant cells. Mass-market stevia products based on this extract, wouldn’t, therefore, have the medicinal properties associated with the whole herb extract. This speaks, of course, to the well-known principle in natural medicine that the activity of the whole can’t be reproduced through a part, nor is the therapeutic activity of the whole identical to the sum of its parts.
While this is only a preliminary study and shouldn’t be interpreted to mean the consumption of whole stevia extract will result in clinical improvements comparable or superior to conventional antibiotics, it opens the door to future research on the topic.
That said, anyone who is looking for an adjunct therapy for conventional treatments of the disease, could utilize this safe, food-based substance as a potential means of support and synergy.
Certainly, there’s little, if any, indication that stevia could cause harm, unlike conventional treatments.
