People throw the word "toxins" around in a real vague manner a lot of the times and it makes this confusing. There are typically two broad categories of bacterial toxins. Endotoxins and exotoxins. These are honestly not that well defined, but generally speaking most people tend to think of exotoxins when they use the word "toxins". These are substances, usually enzymes, produced by a bacteria and released from the cell that often have direct toxic action on the surroundings. Endotoxins on the other hand tend to be structural components of the bacteria that are only released during death of the bacteria. Endotoxins aren't really true "toxins" in the sense that they are damaging chemically. Rather, they are just parts of the microorganism that the immune system recognizes and responds to with aggressive inflammation.
Lyme disease isn't really known for producing potent exotoxins. It's effects are much more like endotoxins. When the bacteria is alive it suppresses the immune system, it evades the immune system, and much of the bacteria is hidden inside the membrane where it's not accessible to the immune system. When it dies, it loses it's grip on the immune system, it can't evade it anymore, and it degrades leaving bacterial debris easily accessed to the immune system. In other words the immune system is much better at finding dead Lyme than live Lyme. And when it does it emits inflammatory signals. This is the basis of a herx. In this sense ALL bacteria have endotoxin-like "toxins". Because they're not really toxins so much as they are key features that the immune system uses to determine what's a bacteria and what's not. The only reason they're toxic is because the immune system uses them as an excuse to ramp up the inflammatory response. So in theory this can include everything from borrelia DNA, to surface antigens, membrane lipids, etc
Post Edited (Psilociraptor) : 10/24/2017 10:09:39 PM (GMT-6)