I think it’s a shame it was withdrawn, with a low effectiveness of 80% and even requiring annual boosters I’d view that as a great option if I lived somewhere with deer ticks. Lyme disease is scary.
Veterinary vaccination for lyme disease is common. According to Wikipedia, the human vaccine was withdrawn due to poor market performance.
Claims of autoimmune-type side effects led to several lawsuits, and though CDC and FDA found no connection to the vaccine, the public largely rejected it.
Oh! This happened to me, and I thought I was just crazy sensitive or something, but it turns out to be an actual thing? After a few days on antibiotics for lyme, I walked to the shop to buy sunscreen. Spent maybe 20 minutes outside. Worst sunburn I've ever had.
Anything that can help prevent tick borne diseases is a win in my book. In Western Europe, in many cases that should probably include restoring wildlife habitats...
My dad developed a sun allergy after going on a specific antibiotic following a spider bite. Been too long for me to recall what the antibiotic was, but I remember him having to apply sunscreen for even under his clothes, long sleeves, pants, gloves and wide brimmed hat through out the summer. If memory serves, it lasted several months, quite a while after he was done with the treatment.
Also, I've only seen people mentioning Lyme disease, but Rocky Mountain spotted tick fever is another tick borne disease you don't want to catch. My understanding it's also one of the main reasons a biosafety level 4 facility is being built in Hamilton, MT [0]. Though, I had thought the facility had been built a long time ago.
Doxycycline? I thought that was a known side effect. My dermatologist warned me about it when I went on a course during the summer months. This was over a decade ago, maybe they stopped warning patients?
Doctors seem to forget to do that sometimes, or the patients miss it. Someone I knew was put on a three month course and got a unusual sunburn, later I googled doxycycline and realized the likely connection.
Ooh, reminds me of my days abusing St John's Wort (amongst a great many other things) during Uni days and feeelig my skin bristle and burn in the heat of light shards of sunlight streaming between otherwise closed curtains... .
I think the problem is that the main way of testing for Lyme is to test for the antibodies. So what if you fall in the 20%? How will you know? You'll still end up being treating whether vaccinated or not.
I’m far more more concerned about “undetected tick bite => lifetime incurable Lyme disease” than “detected tick bite => unnecessary course of antibiotics”.
Last summer, I noticed an odd spot on a leg of my female colleague when she arrived at work in a short skirt.
Fortunately, we are good friends and I could tell her without any kind of trouble.
Yes, she had a tick on that precise place a week before. Yes, it looked like erythema migrans, a typical early sign of a Lyme infection (borreliosis). No, she never heard about that and was a bit reluctant about doing anything about it. Yes, I persuaded her to see her doctor now. She got antibiotics immediately and seems to be fine.
One reason Lyme disease is so scary is that it’s really common to not notice that you got bit. How often do you inspect the back of your knees? (If you live in tick country, it should be “every time you get back from being in the woods”, but many don’t know/practice this.)
It’s a common story to hear about people who don’t connect the dots, and don’t get properly diagnosed early when it’s more treatable.
Ok... and you think the people that don't know to check for ticks will know to get a Lyme vaccine? This doesn't seem logical to me. Most people in those environments know to check for ticks in my experience. The ones who don't are not the type to request a vaccine that they probably don't even know about.
It's easier to get one vaccine a year than to check 50 times (to be generous) a year. Also that would only tell you that you have a tick and then you need to check again that you see the red swelling to know you are infected. Then you need to get the antibiotics and then you need to hope that works.
Also I expect/hope vaccinations will develop into some kind of regular maintenance thing like software updates. With the mRNA technology that would be really easy. Scary for many people, also, but really, why not? Every year there are scientifical reasons to update the immunization for almost everyone against certain antigens. This way we may eliminate many strains of Sars-Cov-2, Influenza, other cold viruses, measles, maybe even HIV and the Herpes family eventually.
"It's easier to get one vaccine a year than to check 50 times (to be generous) a year."
This isn't a replacement, you still have to check even if you're vaccinated.
"Also that would only tell you that you have a tick and then you need to check again that you see the red swelling to know you are infected."
Wrong. The red swelling does no occur in all cases. You can be infected without it. Generally, one should have the tick examined to see how long it was attached (if they don't know).
"Then you need to get the antibiotics and then you need to hope that works."
You would need to do this even if you have the vaccine (assuming the tick was attached for longer than 24 hours or there's reason to believe it was interrupted from a previous meal and then but you - testing the tick will tell).
Your "refutations" don't actually contradict anything I said, I just don't dump everything that comes to mind or that could come to mind into every HN comment I write.
Prevention is always better than a cure, so yes you still have to check. Yes I know the Erythema is optional. Yes I know a vaccine isn't 100% effective. I'm actually a licensed veterinarian you are trying to mansplain here...
Most people take a shower every day, especially if they're doing stuff outside. You really only have to check once per day since the transmission risk is essentially zero if attached for less than 24 hours.
This how it’s done in germany. Just got tested for Lyme disease.
Tick bite was in late summer no rash. The skin in the area changed to red/blue after 5 months, so i got tested and the test was positive. Antibodies IgG 46, IgM 5. Now 3 weeks of antibiotics.
It's sort of the inverse. If you're treated either way, then the vaccine is unnecessary. There are risks, even if rare, associated with vaccines. Basically, there's no value added and a very slight increase of risks.
Yes, but I believe the most common antibiotics prescribed for Lyme disease are doxycycline and monocycline, two antibiotics that are used by millions daily (on a somewhat long-term basis) already for the management of things like acne.
While certainly not ideal, with 8 million prescriptions in the US alone, I'm not sure an additional potentially unnecessary course of doxycycline is the worst thing in the world when compared to the possibility that the alternative is full blown Lyme disease.
I know one of the people who is represented in that table. He got bit in New Jersey, and didn't notice the target growing on his chest until he was driving home, and didn't get treated until he arrived home in Washington (because that's where he's insured; go healthcare). The CDC would count that as a Washington State incident.
See point 3 in the study's stated limitations[1]:
> 3. Surveillance data are captured by county of residence, not county of exposure.
Given that he was 1 of 12 cases in that year, I wouldn't interpret that table as proof that the range of Lyme-infected ticks has spread to Washington state.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/
I think it’s a shame it was withdrawn, with a low effectiveness of 80% and even requiring annual boosters I’d view that as a great option if I lived somewhere with deer ticks. Lyme disease is scary.