French scientists are working on a vaccine against Lyme disease. The vaccine they developed has already entered clinical trials.
We have been hearing about ticks and Lyme disease and other diseases that these arachnids cause for a long time. We know that the best protection is the use of repellants, appropriate clothing in the forest, and careful observation after each exit to a place where we can potentially catch a tick.
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We can get vaccinated against TBE. However, for Lyme disease, a serious disease caused by Borrelia spirochetes, no vaccine has yet been invented. And bacteria can live in our body for even years - if they hide in the immune system, it will stop detecting them. In a word: they can infect cells of the immune system.
Lyme disease does not always mean the appearance of a characteristic erythema around the injection site of the tick. Sometimes the erythema does not appear. And the ailments (e.g. headache, joint pain, chronic fatigue, neuralgia, migraines and others) are diagnosed as another disease.
History already knows attempts to register a Lyme disease vaccine - in 1998, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a Lyme disease vaccine known as LYMErix. It was not long on the market - it was withdrawn in 2002 due to serious side effects.
Now, research on the next preparation is underway. The vaccine being developed by Valneva is already in the clinical development phase. The preparation stimulates the immune system to produce antibodies against six OspA surface protein serotypes common in North America and Europe - typical for Borrelia burgdorferi.
Three doses of the vaccine were injected into over 570 he althy adults from the US and Europe. The people who received the vaccine developed a significant amount of antibodies. If studies on a larger group of people confirm the effectiveness of the vaccine, it could hit the market within a few years.
