Arresting spirochetes: nonthermal extremely low-frequency electromagnetic field exposure suppresses Borrelia burgdorferi motility in vitro.

We evaluated the effect of nonthermal extremely low-frequency electromagnetic field (ELF-EMF) exposure on the motility of Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme disease, using the Electrome BB™ Protocol, a non-contact, non-ionizing system operating within regulatory safety thresholds. Cultures were exposed and assessed by dark-field microscopy for motility. ELF-EMF exposure was substantially more effective, immobilizing up to 96.8% of spirochetes under the longer-duration treatment condition, compared with 13.1% by doxycycline at 0.5 μg/mL in the same assay, a greater than sevenfold separation from this single clinically relevant antibiotic reference condition achieved entirely through a non-pharmacological, biophysical mechanism. Exact one-sided binomial tests against an established baseline motility fraction of 0.85 returned p < 10-120 for both conditions, with every individual longer-duration replicate independently significant at p < 4.4 × 10-12 after Bonferroni correction; longer exposure produced deeper suppression than shorter exposure at the organism level (exact two-sided Fisher test, p = 0.026), consistent with a duration-dependent nonthermal mechanism rather than an acute thermal or stress response. Loss of flagellar motility is functionally equivalent to organismal inactivation in tissue: non-motile B. burgdorferi cannot disseminate, evade immune surveillance, or sustain infection. Because the ELF-EMF mechanism arrests motility without inducing cell lysis, it is also expected to enable host-mediated clearance of intact, motility-arrested spirochetes without triggering the Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction associated with rapid bacterial killing. A controlled murine infection model is the next test in vivo.