By Alice Klein.
A blacklegged tick can spread diseases.
Jim Gathany is aCDC.
A vaccine that creates an immune response to ticks so they can be removed before they transmit a disease has been shown to work in animals. It is hoped that the finding will lead to clinical trials in people.
Borrelia burgdorferi is a bacterium that is the cause of the disease. It can cause lifelong health problems if left unaddressed.
A vaccine that trains the immune system to respond to tick bites was developed by Erol Fikrig and his colleagues at Yale University.
The vaccine has the same way that the covid-19 vaccine directs cells to make coronaviruses.
The red, itchy rash that the pigs developed after being bitten by ticks was a sign of their immune systems responding. The ticks were able to detach early without taking as much blood as they normally would.
The ticks were put on the vaccine-vaccinated and unvaccinated guinea pigs. The ticks were removed from the animals after their skin rash appeared, and they did not become sick with the disease. Half of the unvaccinated animals became sick.
The vaccine will allow us to detect a tick bite early, due to redness at the bite site, and likely itching, if it works the same way in people. This is important because tick bites are painless. The tick could be pulled off before it causes any harm.
Drug treatment could lead to the eradication of the disease.
The vaccine may encourage the tick to fall off naturally before it is transmitted to someone.
The vaccine will be tested in other animal models before being tested in people.
The anti-tick vaccine is different from otherLyme disease vaccines in that it targets the bacteria responsible rather than the tick carrier. The Institute of Parasitology in the Czech Republic says that one advantage of tick-targeted vaccines is that they may also protect against other tick-borne diseases.
Fikrig hopes that it will be possible to develop a vaccine that targets both the ticks and the harmful bacteria. He says that a combination of the two approaches might make a vaccine that is more effective.
Some researchers are looking into whether leaving out baits containing a chemical called hygromycin A that kills B. burgdorferi could be used to eradicate the disease in the wild.
Science Translational Medicine is a journal.
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infectious disease
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