
Lyme disease vaccine found to be safe and effective in clinical trial - montalbano
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2250045-lyme-disease-vaccine-found-to-be-safe-and-effective-in-clinical-trial/
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HALtheWise
My brother got Lyme disease a couple months ago, and it led me into a research
rabbit-hole into what is one of the saddest stories in pharmacology.
Basically, we had a perfectly good Lyme disease vaccine in the the 1990s, but
it had the misfortune of being launched in the middle of the antivax movement,
and it was pulled from the market after false hysteria and undeserved negative
press. To be clear, there was no evidence it was unsafe or ineffective, just
antivaxxers freaking out.

As a fun twist, there are Lyme vaccines available today for dogs and horses,
so the vetrenarians are ahead of the doctors on this one.

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heyjon
The LYMErix vaccine caused similar autoimmune reactions to the disease in some
people. There was a lawsuit, and it was pulled from the market. Hopefully the
new one does not do that.

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acdha
You’re inadvertently proving their point: try to find a citation for that and
you’ll end up with stories circulated by anti-vaccination groups and lawyers
hoping to cash in.

This was extensively studied and there’s a summary here:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/)

The other factor conspicuously left out is the question of what happens
without a vaccine. People still get Lyme and chasing the vaccine off the
market is a net loss if more people catch the disease than would have had
significant complications. Those numbers don’t appear to be even close and
human impact on the environment means that more people are exposed to Lyme
every year.

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shock
The article you quote directly supports GP's claim that the vaccine caused
autoimmune disease in certain individuals:

> These findings suggested that, in patients with the DR4+ genotype, an immune
> response against OspA could translate into a cross-reactive autoimmune
> response. By implication, an OspA Lyme vaccine might result in autoimmunity
> in these genetically predisposed individuals. Although causality proved
> difficult to demonstrate, one study reported four male patients with the
> DR4+ genotype who developed autoimmune arthritis after receiving LYMErix™
> vaccine [34].

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etempleton
Lyme Disease is brutal to those who have the misfortune of being exposed and
it is notoriously hard to diagnose. It will likely not be required for those
in low risk geographic regions, however one imagines it becoming a standard
vaccine for those who are in areas where Lyme is prevalent.

