Via The Guardian: Lyme disease: is a solution on the way? Excerpt:
As a former martial arts world champion, who trained daily and enjoyed camping and hiking at weekends, Stephen Bullough had always prided himself on leading a healthy life.
Like most people, he thought very little when he was bitten by a tick on a camping holiday close to home in Wigan in 2014, never suspecting that this tiny bite would unleash an infection in his body that would one day leave him permanently incapacitated.
“He had a rash on his right arm, which we put down to ringworm, so we put a bit of cream on it and thought nothing of it,” remembers Angela, Stephen’s wife. “In 2015, he started to develop these cognitive problems, getting words wrong. We laughed about it at first, joking, ‘You’re getting old now.’”
But a year later, Bullough began to experience sudden seizures and muscle weakness, leaving him with severe difficulties walking. Over the past three years, his condition has rapidly deteriorated, leaving him unable to see, permanently bed-bound and often suffering multiple seizures at a time.
“Last May, he had a massive seizure and then his whole body was convulsing,” says Angela. “That’s the day he went blind and has never walked or seen since. He then started having back-to-back seizures; he’s in hospital once a month because they just won’t stop, regardless of how many drugs they give him. One weekend, he had 40 seizures.”
Bullough was eventually diagnosed with Lyme disease, an illness caused by various species of bacteria in the genus Borrelia that live in the guts of ticks. Once transmitted to humans, it can attack the immune system and lead to serious health complications such as arthritis, meningitis, neurological problems, even heart failure. While Lyme disease can sometimes be treated with antibiotics if detected early, not everyone responds and for patients such as Bullough who have developed chronic symptoms, there is currently no cure.
This is particularly concerning as Lyme disease appears to be on the rise, something scientists have attributed to climate change, creating conditions in which tick populations can thrive. While the disease is currently estimated to affect between 2,000 and 3,000 new people every year in the UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) suspects the real figure is far higher.
But for scientists, one of the most tragic aspects of Bullough’s story, as with those of many other patients, is that it could potentially have been avoided. In the late 1990s, the first preventive human vaccine, called LYMErix, was developed and 1.4m doses had been administered by the end of 2001. The data suggests it was highly effective, protecting against the disease in almost 90% of cases.
LYMErix wasn’t perfect. It was relatively expensive, did not work in young children, only protected against one strain of Lyme disease and was only available in the US. But it appeared to be the first step towards eradicating the disease for good. Anti-vaccine fear saw it vanish from the market, however, and with that, all scientific research and investment in the field ceased.
The death knell for LYMErix proved to be a theory that the vaccine could induce autoimmune reactions in humans. This was partially based on a study from 2000 that found the vaccine contributed to arthritis in hamsters, as well as entirely hypothetical concerns from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel, which approved LYMErix, that the immune system might overreact and begin to attack healthy tissue along with the Borrelia bacteria.
These ideas were subsequently disproved, but the fear continued to spread. In 1998, the now retracted Lancet study linking the MMR vaccine to autism had been published and the modern anti-vaccine movement was gathering momentum.
Class action lawsuits were filed against LYMErix’s manufacturer after several incidents of arthritis were reported. But while the evidence suggested that these incidents were unconnected to the vaccine, sales began to plummet and in 2002, the product was withdrawn altogether.
“The consequences have been that, until recently, no manufacturer has wanted to touch this,” says Gregory Poland, who is head of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group in Minnesota. “Some of the anti-vax campaigners had published a statement saying that no matter what kind of Lyme vaccine they develop, we will organise mass protests and lawsuits. In the US, it takes about 10 to 15 years of research and about a billion dollars to develop a vaccine and get it licensed. Since LYMErix, nobody’s been willing to risk that.”
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