Developing a new, improved blood test for Lyme disease
19 November 2019
Dash of Lyme
A bite from a stealthy tick often carries these spiral-shaped Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria (highlighted in red and green) into the blood stream causing Lyme disease. Infection brings a confusing range of symptoms, from muscular pain to a rash that moves outwards from the bite. Common laboratory tests on blood serum can miss these early stages, slowing down treatment and recovery. But help may come with a newly-discovered set of biomarkers – biological molecules that act like a fingerprint for the disease in chemical tests. Performing sensitive tests in a sort of portable microfluidic laboratory, may allow quick diagnosis of the early stages of Lyme disease, halting Borrelia burgdorferi in their spiralling tracks.
Written by
- Image from the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
- Research from Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY and Immuno Technologies Inc, Memphis, TN, USA
- Image copyright held by NIAID
- Research published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, October 2019
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