In 2015, Nikki Schultek was at the peak of her career: a young mother of two young sons and a freshman who’d just completed a half marathon. Then she was hit by a mysterious illness. Her asthma, which she’d been managing well, began to worsen. Over the next few months, she suffered chronic pain, indigestion, and irregular heartbeats. Then came the “final straw”: brain fog and memory loss, signs of neurodegeneration. “I was at my lowest,” she recalls. “I started making plans for my kids, writing down notes of what I would tell them if my symptoms continued to get worse.”
Ms. Schultek received a variety of diagnoses for specific problems, none of which quite matched her symptom constellation. Finally, a doctor suggested an undetected infection might be behind her chronic pain and breathing difficulties. She tested positive. Borrelia burgdorferi and Chlamydia pneumonia She was diagnosed with an infection and prescribed a cocktail of antibiotics, which subsided all her symptoms, including the brain fog and memory problems.
Schultek has since founded a research group to investigate the role of infection in cognitive decline more generally. Although the idea was once considered far-fetched, interest in the brain’s microbial community is growing rapidly. Our gray matter is teeming with bacteria, viruses, and fungi, and it turns out that a deeper understanding of this unexpected microbial community holds great promise for preventing neurodegenerative diseases. As Schultek discovered, it may even be possible to reverse symptoms of decline when things go awry. And, most exciting of all, several potential treatments are on track to be proven…
