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Lyme Disease Vaccine

© Neal Rolfe Chamberlain

Summer is upon us in the Northern Hemisphere. With summer comes wonderful outdoor activities like hiking, picnics, camping, swimming, boating, and just plain fun. With all this fun does come some problems. This year's mild winter may result in many more ticks surviving and in search of food. That food is the blood of deer, mice, and bear. However, if a human should happen along at the right time they also are a good source of food.

Along with these nasty ticks come many different diseases. In fact at least nine different diseases can be acquired from ticks in the United States:

1. Lyme Disease (bacteria)
2. Ehrlichiosis (HME form; bacteria)
3. Ehrlichiosis (HGE form; bacteria)
4. Babesiosis (parasite)
5. Tick Paralysis (toxin from tick)
6. Tick-borne Relapsing Fever (bacteria)
7. Tularemia (bacteria)
8. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (bacteria)
9. Colorado Tick Fever (virus).

Clinically confirmed cases of Lyme disease have been reported all over Eurasia, as well in the USA and Canada. Lyme disease (Lyme borreliosis) is the most commonly reported tick-borne infection in Europe and North America. The tick that helps to spread Lyme disease is very tiny as you can see from the image below. Most of the time it is the nymph form of the tick that transmits Lyme disease.

A CNN report indicates that the United States Food and Drug Administration is considering approval of a vaccine to protect people from getting Lyme disease. If approved, this vaccine could prevent thousands of cases of Lyme disease in the United States. Over 16,000 people acquired Lyme disease in 1996 in the United States alone.

The vaccine, called LYMErix, requires three shots over a year's time and is about 80 percent effective. People receiving the vaccine are not fully protected until the third and final shot is given. Without that third shot only about 50 percent of the people are protected from getting Lyme disease. This vaccine is also only available for people over 15 years of age. The vaccine contains a protein called Outer Surface Protein A (Osp A).

The bacteria (Borrelia burgdorferi) that causes Lyme disease does not produce Osp A while in humans. Osp A is made only while the bacteria is living inside a tick. As the tick takes in blood, the Osp A antibodies, produced by people who have been vaccinated, start killing the bacteria. The bacteria are killed before they are able to enter our bodies.

If all goes well the vaccine should be approved for use by the fall of 1998. If you do get this vaccine remember to get all three shots. The first two injections are given a month apart with the third injection, given a year later. Fifty percent of the people only injected two times

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