UMass works toward new Lyme injection

[Antares in NYC]

Call me cynical, but I'm not sure this will do much to prevent anything, and certainly will do ZERO for those already afflicted by the disease.

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/healthcare/2015/10/umass_works_toward_new_lyme_injection
UMass works toward new Lyme injection
Would stop disease

Scientists at UMass Medical School are developing an antibody drug that, with one injection each year, could prevent people from developing Lyme disease, the most common tick-borne infection in North America.

The research, which is scheduled to be presented today at the annual meeting of the Infectious Disease Society of America in San Diego, details the effectiveness of a monoclonal antibody in targeting the bacteria that causes Lyme disease in mice.

If successfully tested in humans, it would be a major breakthrough, since the only current means of preventing the disease is to avoid exposure to infected ticks.

“At the moment, there is no medicine that is able to prevent Lyme disease,” said Dr. Mark S. Klempner, professor of medicine and executive vice chancellor of UMass Medical School’s MassBiologics, the only nonprofit, federally licensed manufacturer of vaccines in the U.S. “The idea here is you could take one shot at the beginning of the season and be protected immediately and for the duration of the season. For Lyme, this would be a first.”

Klempner said he, Dr. Yang Wang and colleagues took a different approach from a vaccine that was developed about a decade ago and that required about three shots over roughly six months.

When people took the vaccine, they developed many antibodies, including at least one that could prevent transmission of the disease.

By identifying that antibody, Klempner and his colleagues found that a tick could drink a mouse’s blood with the antibody in it, and the antibody would kill the bacteria in the tick’s gut, before the bacteria could move into the salivary glands and be transmitted to the mouse through a bite.

Preclinical development is now underway to refine the minimum dosage required to provide long-term protection from infection, Klempner said.

Human trials are expected to begin next year, he said, and if the Food and Drug Administration eventually approves the antibody drug, it could become commercially available in roughly three years.
(...)

I love the sub-header "Would stop disease".
Yeah... let's wait and see if this vaccine doesn't turn up like Lymerix, doing more damage than good.

One thing we do know it will accomplish is to line up the pockets of Dr. Klempner and the rest of the "Lyme deniers" that hold patents for this vaccine.

Plus it's a seasonal vaccine... You will have to have it every year to prevent Lyme.They really see us as cash registers, not patients.

Yes, I know I'm cynical, but that's what 16 years of dealing with this curse would do to you.

 

[MadeleineKM]

But this isnt entirely like a vaccine, I actually think this can be helpful in future

 

[duncan]

Klempner? Lead author of two of the four controlled studies that some try to claim offer substantive arguments against long term abx therapy, where long term = no more than 90 days?

That Klempner?

 

[Antares in NYC]

Yes, that Klempner.

The same one whose study was favored for the 2006 IDSA Lyme Guidelines, while the Embers study with live monkeys (proving long term persistence post-abx) was stalled from publication for 12 years!

The same Klempner involved in the Lymerix vaccine that left people incapacitated.

That Klempner. What could possibly go wrong?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Martial]

The real cure I am banking on is in the research of the western fence lizard. Some kind of antigen in their blood actually outright neutralizes the entire infection, not prevention but cure! It will be some time before they figure out exactly how this works and find a way to make it viable for us though. Money and awareness for that research would be a huge factor in materialization.

I misspoke on this original post, it is actually a protein in the blood not antigen.

 

[MadeleineKM]

I thought that was a antigen that would fight the infection in the research in the link. In the headline the word treatment is mentioned

 

[Martial]

I thought that was a antigen that would fight the infection in the research in the link. In the headline the word treatment is mentioned

The way its discussed it doesn't sound like it does much once infection has taken place, I could be wrong though. The Western Fence lizards blood has a protein which can neutralize the infection no matter how deep or long its been in the system. Its like giving the body a clean slate from the infection. Rather then a process of the immune system working hard fighting it off.

http://www.anapsid.org/lyme/sceloporus.html

http://news.berkeley.edu/2011/02/15/ticks-lizard-lyme-disease/

https://ucanr.edu/repositoryfiles/ca5202p4-67730.pdf

http://www.murraysussermd.com/lyme-disease-and-lizards-los-angeles/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9488334

also when there was an antibody based vaccine in the past it caused numerous issues and was eventually pulled from the market. It worked in the same way this original vaccine posted does too, which makes you wonder if it shares the same risks as Lymerix did.

http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/52/suppl_3/s253.full

 

[valentinelynx]

Another problem with Lyme vaccines is that they only target Lyme disease, not the rest of the pathogens that can be transmitted alongside borrelia (babesia, erhlichia, bartonella, viruses). So, a person may get a tick bite and think the risk of disease is gone because of having the vaccine, despite still being at the same risk of the so-called co-infections potentially carried by the tick.

And, if the vaccine works well enough that it prevents the development of the EM rash which for many is the herald sign of having been bitten by a tick (tick bites are painless and once the tick is gone you have no way of knowing you were bitten unless you get the rash) then tick bitten people are left with no way of knowing they are at risk of these other tick-borne infections.

A better approach is to prevent tick bites, reduce the tick population or somehow sterilize the ticks.