Vaccine Lyme Disease
No one wants to be thought of as ordinary as they traverse Life. But the reality is that Borreliosis Complex is devolving all of us to a more primitive and less human state; it is a thief that steals our intellectual virtuosity by jamming our neural circuits. Someone needs to pull the alarm before it is too late and the thief escapes with our souls - Joseph G. Jemsek MD
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The incredibly frustrating reason there’s no Lyme disease vaccine
Lyme has quickly become one of the most common infectious diseases in America, with many as 300,000 people infected every year. And public health officials fear the bacterial infection, which jumps from ticks to humans, will only spread farther and faster as climate change makes more parts of the US habitable for ticks.
Lyme can be treated with antibiotics. And there are many ways to prevent tick bites. But there’s no vaccine available if you want extra protection against the disease (unless you’re a dog). Yet in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a vaccine called LYMErix was sold to prevent between 76 and 92 percent of infections. Hundreds of thousands of people got…
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So why does my dog get Lyme disease vaccine, and I don’t?
Turns out there was one for people in late ’90s. Pioneering expert explains why it disappeared, prospects for new one in trials.
We Used to Have a Lyme Disease Vaccine. Are We Ready to Bring One Back?
“Lyme disease is the only infectious disease that I know of for which we have a vaccine that’s been shown in Phase 3 trials to be safe and effective, but that is not available to the public,” says Dr. Allen Steere, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of translational research in rheumatology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Articles of Interest
Lyme disease is on the rise. Why is there still no vaccine?
Two decades after a vaccine was withdrawn, scientists are producing new medicines to fend off a disease that experts estimate afflicts nearly half a million people each year.
Lyme disease is set to explode and we still don’t have a vaccine
The best approach would be to vaccinate people at risk – but there is currently no vaccine. We used to have one, but thanks to anti-vaccination activists, that is no longer the case.
Lyme disease vaccine could be coming soon
Even though several Lyme disease vaccines are available for dogs, humans haven't had an option since LYMERix — made by the former SmithKline Beecham — was pulled from the market in 2002 due to low consumer demand tied to reports of arthritis and other adverse events and anti-vaccine sentiment. That could all change in the next couple of years. Earlier this month, Moderna announced two novel mRNA vaccine candidates against Lyme disease in its pipeline.
New Effort for Lyme Disease Vaccine Draws Early Fire
Efforts to bring a vaccine for Lyme disease to the market have run aground amid heated debate over the years. Now, a European company is in the early stages of creating a vaccine for the increasingly common tick-borne disease. Lyme disease patient-advocacy groups—who disagree with the protocols used by most doctors for the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease—are already raising concerns.
The History of the Lyme Disease Vaccine
There is no evidence to suggest that the Lyme disease vaccine ever caused Lyme arthritis, but it was taken off the market largely in response to lawsuits alleging exactly that. Why?
