Published on August 24, 2006 at 6:34 AM
Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in the Northern Hemisphere, and the most common tick-borne illness in the United States and Europe.
It is now one of the fastest growing infectious diseases in the U.S. and is contracted from the bite of a tick.
The disease has a range of symptoms which may include a rash, flu-like symptoms, neurologic, arthritic and cardiac manifestations.
Caught early the disease can be treated with antibiotics and the prognosis is usually excellent but delayed or inadequate treatment may lead to the spread of the infection to the joints, heart and nervous system, causing serious health problems which are both disabling and difficult to treat.
There has been much controversy over the diagnosis, testing and treatment and two different standards of care for Lyme disease have emerged.
On the one hand are those who believe that Lyme disease is relatively rare, easily diagnosed with available blood tests, and easily treated with two to four weeks of antibiotics.
On the other hand are those who believe that Lyme disease is under-diagnosed, that available blood tests are unreliable, and that extended antibiotic treatment is often necessary.
Now researchers say a newly-identified immune system trigger for fighting Lyme disease could help in the development of a new vaccine to prevent the tick-borne infection.
The researchers at California's La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology conducted an international study which found that the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, contains a glycolipid that triggers an immune response from the body's natural killer T cells.
This particular glycolipid is one of the few that naturally induce an immune response from T cells, say the researchers.
Their findings are published in the online edition of the journal Nature Immunology.