'If Lyme disease were the only thing we could get from these vermin, we’d be lucky. And we’re not,' explains ManvBrain
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer. Photo: Rbkomar/Getty Images Thanks to vaccines, the number of COVID-19 cases has plummeted in the U.S. and restrictions are being lifted across the country. But as we return to our normal activities, we face a more familiar summertime scourge. We’re in the thick of Lyme disease season – the two-month run from early June to the end of July when 85 percent of infections take place. Surprisingly, vaccines may have allowed us to avoid this epidemic, too.
The problem is when the parasite has itself been parasitized by a spiral-shaped bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi or one of its closely-related cousins. As the tick slurps up your blood, bacteria make their way from its gut to its salivary glands and then into your body. You probably won’t see the tick that infects you After hatching out of an egg, the deer tick passes through three stages: larva, nymph, and adult. At each stage, the tick must find a new host and feed. Since when they hatch they are uninfected by Borrelia, larva can’t cause Lyme disease. And adult ticks are easy to feel and spot when they crawl on you, so they’re also unlikely to latch on and pass along the disease.
For me, the worst part was shooting headaches so intense they’d wake me up in the middle of the night. The constant pain made me so uncomfortable that my personality was changing: I became impatient, sullen, short-tempered. When my doctor’s office called to say that my test results had come back positive, I was elated: I knew that within a day or two of starting a course of antibiotics, I’d gotten a reprieve from a misery that otherwise could have dragged on until god knows when.
A safe and effective vaccine exists, but you can’t get it After Borrelia burgdorferi was identified in 1983 as the cause of Lyme disease, researchers went to work developing a vaccine, and in short order they found success. SmithKlineBeecham tested its three-dose LYMErix vaccine on some 10,000 volunteers and found that it was 76 percent effective, with no significant side effects. In 1998 the FDA approved it, and areas where the vaccine was widely administered showed sharp drops in Lyme disease.
Meanwhile, earlier this year a company called MassBiologics began phase I trials of a shot called Lyme PrEP that contains monoclonal antibodies against Borrelia. Unlike a vaccine, this doesn’t prod your immune system to take up arms against the invader, but instead delivers the antibodies that can kill the bacteria all by themselves.
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