A New Lyme Disease Vaccine Is Showing Promise (iflscience.com) 31
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IFLScience: Promising results have come out of the only active clinical trial for a vaccine against Lyme disease. Valneva, a French biotech company, recently announced its first Phase 2 clinical trial has shown that its vaccine against Lyme disease is both safe and effective. The vaccine works by triggering the body's immune system to produce antibodies for the six common serotypes of the disease that are found in North America and Europe. It does this by introducing an isolated protein of the pathogen to the body, allowing the immune system to recognize and respond to the surface proteins found on the bacteria responsible for Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi.
Over 570 healthy adults in the US and Europe were given one of two dose levels of the vaccine in three injections, while others were given a placebo as a control. Both groups that received the active dose were found to have produced a significant amount of antibodies against each of the six most prevalent Outer Surface Protein A serotypes of B. burgdorferi. [...] This new potential vaccine, known as VLA15, is currently the only active Lyme disease vaccine in clinical development. Back in 1998, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a Lyme disease vaccine known as LYMErix. It was withdrawn from the market just three years later following doubts over its effectiveness and other contentions. Much of the controversy, however, was often said to have been kicked up by the anti-vaccination movement, which was growing in momentum at the time.
Over 570 healthy adults in the US and Europe were given one of two dose levels of the vaccine in three injections, while others were given a placebo as a control. Both groups that received the active dose were found to have produced a significant amount of antibodies against each of the six most prevalent Outer Surface Protein A serotypes of B. burgdorferi. [...] This new potential vaccine, known as VLA15, is currently the only active Lyme disease vaccine in clinical development. Back in 1998, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a Lyme disease vaccine known as LYMErix. It was withdrawn from the market just three years later following doubts over its effectiveness and other contentions. Much of the controversy, however, was often said to have been kicked up by the anti-vaccination movement, which was growing in momentum at the time.
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PSA: 1970 was 50 years ago. Those stereotypes stopped being relevant to society a few decades ago.
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Yeah, everyone knows that hippies have scabies and lice, not ticks.
The real hippies are hiding. They don't want to be found.
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The real hippies are running corporations, pulling political strings, retired, or dead. They became the man, man.
So why not revive the original? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's great that we probably have a new vaccine against Lyme disease. I remember reading about the original vaccine and how the project was killed primarily because of political issues rather than scientific ones. So now that the anti-vaxxers have less traction, why not dust off the original vaccine?
It would be a shame to waste the money and effort that went into the first one. It can't hurt to have an alternative vaccine or two, especially when different strains of the bacteria might be more vulnerable to one than to the other.
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Re:So why not revive the original? (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I find it interesting how today, many special interest advocates want not only freedom to pursue their ideals but want to force others. Why the antivax people aren't happy just refusing but have to try and keep others from making their decision.
As with any zealot, they cannot stand that someone somewhere may be doing something they do not approve of and thus must do whatever it takes too prevent them from doing that. they are so convinced they are right that everyone must just see the light and do what they say. We had a neighbor with an autuistic child who would pass out antivax flyers at neighborhood school bus stops. She never seemed to get why neighbors avoided her.
Using logic and science is useless so It's not even worth arguing with them. they are so convinced they re right and if you disagree you've bought into the big conspiracy between pharma, the government, and Bill Gates.
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To be fair, the big conspiracy between pharma and doctors (possibly Bill Gates too - still undecided but the balance of probabilities is that he's a twat) is quite strong - look at the old MMR vaccine controversary that started a lot of this. Entirely fake, created by a doctor who wanted to sell his pharma vaccines instead of the cheap and effective MMR vaccine.
So spread all the fake stories that it was dangerous, articles that ran in The Lancet (and took 11 years for them to remove) that are a big cause of
Re:So why not revive the original? (Score:5, Informative)
That's actually a misreading of the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In December 2006, Deer, writing in the Sunday Times, further reported that in addition to the money they gave the Royal Free Hospital, the lawyers responsible for the MMR lawsuit had paid Wakefield personally more than £400,000, which he had not previously disclosed.
The whole thing was initiated by lawyers who wanted to discredit a medical treatment so they could do a class action lawsuit against the medical system, and have the cash before anyone could do a serious scientific study. That's why the trigger was in a press conference held by that doctor rather than in the research paper he actually wrote. Nobody in 'pharma' was actually involved in this.
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That was only part of it - the lawyers were just another part of the whoel scam. Wakefield really wanted to produce 3 separate vaccines and have them used instead of the single MMR one.
From the same link you posted:
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"Probably" may be overstating it a bit. This was a Phase 2 Clinical trial. They still have Phase 3 and Phase 4 clinical trials before they get as far as "probably"...
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Phase 3. Phase 4 is a post marketing trial. They're largely academic, unless you happen to be killing 0.1% of people you treat.
Awesome! (Score:4, Interesting)
This is genuinely exciting! I hate ticks with a passion. Being creepy is the least of it. Have you seen the list of horrible diseases they carry? How does a slow moving bloodsucker get around so much? (Yes I know it's mice carrying them) There's also theories they can spread CWD between deer. Ugh.
Vaccinating against Lyme would be a great breakthrough. But I hope this vaccine won't diminish tick control habits, like spraying clothes with permethrin.
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Oh man, I feel all warm and fuzzy! Or is it Rocky mountain spotted fever?
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Ugh, that'd mean the sods are levelling up in the background.. Sounds like shortly, to get a good picnic spot, you'll first need to defeat the level 56 Ticks.
Better get out there soon though, as there's rumour going around some of them will be level 57 shortly.
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Fun idea, but we can breed mosquitoes to be infertile after one generation, causing significant harm to their population. If we can do the same to ticks then that would be lovely. Though releasing extra male ticks that DO bite (versus releasing extra male mosquitoes that don't) is probably something people wouldn't like very much in the short term.
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not yet shown to be effective (Score:2)
Well, at least not yet shown to be effective in preventing infection, even if it is effective in generating anti-bodies.
They still need a much larger study where people in the placebo do get infected at a statistically significant higher rate than the treatment group.
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Following your comment I googled and came across this interesting account of the story of LYMErix....
The Lyme vaccine: a cautionary tale
L. E. NIGROVIC1,* and K. M. THOMPSON2,3
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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What is the reasoning about a placebo control ... (Score:2)
Seriously, how could a placebo have any effect in a vaccination study?
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