25 ms·

Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

350 points by pama 5y ago

tes123456789 5y ago
55
tes123456789 5y ago
tes123456789
supperburg 5y ago
The first vaccine had a problem where it gave people Lyme every once in a while. My hypothesis is that Lyme disease is an autoimmune disease caused by being exposed too acutely in some way, or for too long. For some people, a tick byte isn’t enough exposure to trigger it. For others, the vaccine is enough. They didn’t catch it early in clinical trials because those people are rare enough to not show up in small studies. So by that logic, the same thing should happen here. Maybe this time it will be a small enough group of people to shove under the rug. There’s no medicine in the world that doesn’t harm people in some capacity.
- acdha 5y ago
  > The first vaccine had a problem where it gave people Lyme every once in a while. Do you have a citation for that? The FDA review didn’t mention that: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/
  - supperburg 5y ago
    > 59 reports of arthritis associated with vaccination Maybe it was coincidence. I’m just saying if the vaccine gave people Lyme, here’s my hypothesis. But it makes a lot of sense that an autoimmune disease created by exposure to X could be triggered by a vaccine containing X. The definition of a vaccine is to expose a person to whatever it is the immune system recognizes — spike proteins and so on. It’s plausible. But as you point out, not very likely.
    - 542354234235 5y ago
      Let's include the entire quote >By 2001, with over 1·4 million Lyme vaccine doses distributed in the United States the VAERS database included 905 reports of mild self-limited reactions and 59 reports of arthritis associated with vaccination [29]. The arthritis incidence in the patients receiving Lyme vaccine occurred at the same rate as the background in unvaccinated individuals. In addition, the data did not show a temporal spike in arthritis diagnoses after the second and third vaccine dose expected for an immune-mediated phenomenon. The FDA found no suggestion that the Lyme vaccine caused harm to its recipients. 54,000,000 Americans have had some form of arthritis [1]. I don’t exactly find it compelling that 0.0001% of them also happened to have gotten a vaccine.
      - supperburg 5y ago
        That’s pretty much what I said
- timonoko 5y ago
  Emphasis should be on tick-bite prevention. I have never had live tick on me and have been literally wallowing on all tick-infested areas on northern hemisphere. They just die. Most probably just drop off, but sometimes there is dead tick only slightly attached. Looks like they die on first drop of blood.
  - Ensorceled 5y ago
    Interestingly, what you described might just be a side effect of tick bite exposure ... https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/health/lyme-disease/2015/08/01/how-one-local-mans-immunity-ticks-could-save-us-all/30578799/ https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/health/lyme-d...
    - timonoko 5y ago
      Sounds true. I actually had one and only tick in 1955. It was on my testicles, so very embarrassing.
      - reustle 5y ago
        It's pretty hard to say that confidently with how small deer ticks are. I find them crawling on me all the time in Pennsylvania, and those are just the larger ones. Have found a few deer ticks on me over the years, and good luck finding them in your hair without someone else to look.
        timonoko 5y ago
        I mean of course that I have never had a tick which managed to suck anything, except once in 1955. Also I remember being drunk and watching Ixodes Ricinus move along my arm and trying to stick its nose thru skin. Everytime it backed up real fast, like it found something nasty inside. Very much the same thing as American deer tick Ixodes scapularis.
dovebird 5y ago
PSA: This site (HN) has been overun by shills. Beware.
dovebird 5y ago
PSA: This site (HN) has been overun by s-h-ills. Beware.
mantas 5y ago
As someone who had Lyme twice.... YES PLEASE.
aixi 5y ago
Ever since I moved to the 'first world' I've been scared of this disease. We don't have it where I come from and the long term effects sound straight up terrible.
- zz865 5y ago
  Me too, and with Zika and Covid I feel like I've gone back to the dark ages of diseases.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    That's the cost of fast international travel without health screenings or true quarantines.
- mantas 5y ago
  It's super easy to treat if caught early. But that's where the good ends. Vast majority of cases present the infamous circle. But some don't. And if you got the circle in a hard-to-notice spot, it's easy to miss it (it will a month or two into infection) too. First precaution is to check your legs (and possibly torso/hands) for ticks after passing through high grass. And whole body after coming from the woods. The nasty bit is you may bring ticks home, they stay active for a while and they may bite someone else. If you get a rash in a weird spot and you've been out in the woods in the past 48 hours, check it out thoroughly. You may have a tick there. I've had countless ticks hiding in weird places that I found due to weird itchy-rashy feeling. Once you get the tick, remove it in a safe manner asap. Lyme is transferred after the tick is done feeding and about to take off. Which is ~48 hours. Personally Lyme Encephalitis is much scarier. Not as common, but long term effects are much more likely and even worse. On the bright side, there's a vaccine for it.
  - burntwater 5y ago
    Mostly good advice, except for the one comment: >Vast majority of cases present the infamous circle. But some don't. I believe it's actually the other way around, only 20-30% of cases show the "typical" bullseye.
happyhardcore 5y ago
Can anyone give some insight as to why a vaccine hasn't been possible using more traditional technology?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- _Microft 5y ago
  There was one but it was taken off the market. It's a bit of a sad story because it worked but because of unfounded claims that it had side effects, it lost trust of the public: "In clinical trials involving more than 10,000 people, the vaccine, called LYMErix, was found to confer protective immunity to Borrelia in 76% of adults and 100% of children with only mild or moderate and transient adverse effects. [...] Subsequently, hundreds of vaccine recipients reported they had developed autoimmune and other side effects. Supported by some advocacy groups, a number of class-action lawsuits were filed against GlaxoSmithKline, alleging the vaccine had caused these health problems. These claims were investigated by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control, which found no connection between the vaccine and the autoimmune complaints. Despite the lack of evidence that the complaints were caused by the vaccine, sales plummeted and LYMErix was withdrawn from the U.S. market by GlaxoSmithKline in February 2002, in the setting of negative media coverage and fears of vaccine side effects.", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Vaccination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Vaccination
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
    Unfounded claims from 100s of people developing imaginary autoimmune disorders? Mind you people are still getting compensated in court for autoimmune disorders arising from the Hep-B vaccine, even though no causal link was found. Just yesterday I had to accompany my sister to the phlebologist, because of severe side-effects from Pfizer, he told us he was seeing troves of patients for similar reasons even though officially no causal-link was established. At some point you have to wonder if health-policy takes precedence over truthful reporting when it comes to vaccines. (I'm "pro-vax" btw, I was the one who convinced my sister to go take her dose even though she's quite young. Now I feel like a moron.)
Thaxll 5y ago
Why is it a vaccine? Are there going to be vaccine for everything in the future?
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > Are there going to be vaccine for everything in the future? For a lot of stuff, the answer is probably yes, mRNA based vaccines are a revolutionary game changer - their quick turnaround time means you can actually tailor them to a specific cancer or pathogen the patient has and use the patient's own immune system to fight against the disease. Another advantage of mRNA is that manufacture doesn't depend on chicken eggs which take about six months to produce, are challenging to keep sterile enough and have issues for people with allergies (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/27/health/chicken-egg-flu-vaccine-intl-hnk-scli/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/27/health/chicken-egg-flu-va...). However, some viruses like HIV or Influenza mutate so much that it was hard to make effective viruses, we will have to wait and see what the future brings there.
- dovebird 5y ago
  Yes. The beauty of the Vaccine is that it sells on fear. And there is no limit to which a human being can be scared...
  - mantas 5y ago
    Lyme is one of those disease where fear is valid to say the least.
- mantas 5y ago
  Because Lyme disease is hard to catch early. And long-lasting Lyme is damn hard to treat with lots of side effects.
- Tycho 5y ago
  I think thanks to Covid booster shots they realise they can pivot to a Vaccine-as-a-Service model and create all sorts of recurring revenue streams.
dovebird 5y ago
Is there a way to compensate people who get injured as part of these trials? These people.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mxqC9SiRh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mxqC9SiRh8 We hear "Vaccine trials" and handwave this as someone elses problem. But these people, being naive, never thought they would get their lives destroyed. But now it seems that they cannot even get doctors to look into their conditions, and has to live as some sort of societal reject..
_Microft 5y ago
Prepare to read the headline "mRNA vaccine trial for <...>" a lot in the future. My guess is that they are going to produce mRNA versions of basically any vaccine (and then some) in the future. The nice thing about the technology seems to be that you only need to exchange the mRNA payload while the surrounding delivery method can be reused. That makes it not only a fast method to create a vaccine but a very convenient way as well. Nice side effect might be that for the next pandemic, we might have doses for everyone ready at the moment the trials are done. Take that with a giant grain of salt because I'm not in the industry.
- ianhawes 5y ago
  The biggest investment that Pfizer made was the creation of a way to reliably manufacture mRNA vaccines. Now they must recoup those investments.
  - swalsh 5y ago
    I think the term you're looking for is capitalize. Pfizer made some investments in a technology that had wide applications, and now they want to capitalize on it. It's good business, and a lot of people are going to be helped in the process.
  - lampe3 5y ago
    Can you name any big company that does not work that way? Like Apple, Facebook, Ford, Tesla, Nestle ect ect. And what would be an alternative?
    - ianhawes 5y ago
      My understanding is that it has been known for years that mRNA is a viable vaccine delivery vector, but the R&D hadn't been completed for the other aspect of the business - production and safety at scale.
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        Afaik, it was backed up behind a lack of safety trials. Given how expensive those are to run, and how mRNA's primary benefit (speed of development) wasn't a competitive advantage in "normal" times, we had something that we thought was better, but no financial case to toss the gobs of money at it to get it certified. If SARS-CoV-2 is remembered for one thing, it should be for finally breaking the logjam and "giving" us approved mRNA platforms.
dovebird 5y ago
I posted a comment about the people who are injured in these trials and it got insta-flagged. Here is what I wrote without the link to the video. Just want to see if this gets flagged/removed as well.. >Is there a way to compensate people who get injured as part of these trials? These people.. -- link to video removed -- We hear "Vaccine trials" and handwave this as someone elses problem. But these people, being naive, never thought they would get their lives destroyed. But now it seems that they cannot even get doctors to look into their conditions, and has to live as some sort of societal reject..
timonoko 5y ago
Emphasis should be on tick-bite prevention. I have never had live tick on me and have been literally wallowing on all tick-infested areas of northern hemisphere. They just die. Most probably just drop off, but sometimes there is dead tick only slightly attached. Looks like they die on first drop of blood.
- _Microft 5y ago
  People developing immunity to ticks has been reported. We discussed that here half a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28281523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28281523
nikkinana 5y ago
Oh another mandatory money flow stream incoming! Get your mRNA vax card now folks.
seren 5y ago
This is Phase 2, but I wonder how long Phase 3 will take, given that getting Lyme disease is still pretty rare, can easily be missed or misdiagnosed, it will takes a lot of time and people to get a significant effect between a control group and vaccinated people
- pirate787 5y ago
  Lyme is not rare, the CDC estimates 476,000 cases per year in the US. https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/humancases.html https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/humancases.html
  - nverno 5y ago
    where I used to live in NH signs posted around trailheads said something like 30% of deer ticks were likely carrying Lyme, and that was 5 years ago.
  - seren 5y ago
    Thanks, that is certainly more than I would have expected!
- astura 5y ago
  Lyme disease is very common on the northeast coast of the United States nowadays. The disease is increasing every year due to a massive increase in deer and mice and is considered a major public health issue. Since 14 states account for 95% of infections it might seem like a rare disease if you live outside of those 14 states.
- matt_the_bass 5y ago
  Not rare in New England. I’ve contracted it twice since the beginning of covid. And once 23 years ago. The first time I was sick for a year even with treatment. These last two times I caught it early but still suffered for months and my body hurts with changes in the weather. I wish I’d had the vaccine.
KronisLV 5y ago
I actually had Lyme disease when i was younger. Curiously enough, i didn't get the somewhat common rash after the tick bite, but instead it was discovered later, as a part of blood testing. I was submitted to that after my relatives had concerns about how lethargic i was being, as well as because i was experiencing joint pain, which the blood test later seemed to confirm. If i recall correctly, i was given antibiotics and felt pretty bad for a month onwards, though nowadays i'm not aware of any lingering long term effects, apart from maybe my short term memory being slightly worse than i'd expect it to. Of course, i think that in my case i had it pretty easy, since some other folks are known to develop symptoms that are considerably more worse. Whether there will be any lingering consequences in my future because of it, only time will tell. A vaccine would definitely be welcome, especially because of how common ticks are here in Eastern Europe - any walk in the forest might end with more than one of them on your clothes. If you have dogs, you'll probably have to remove dozens of those from their fur every summer.
- Inhibit 5y ago
  In a side note I usually read that those rashes are only present in 30% of cases or so. Probably good advice to get checked out if you suspect an infection. Multiple times, if necessary, as the testing also doesn't appear to have a high degree of accuracy.
  - dejv 5y ago
    Yeah, got lyme disease one month ago and there was no rashes as well. Good idea is to send the tick to laboratory for testing, it will take quite some time (week or two) but better than nothing.
menduza23 5y ago
I love Pfizer. They censor the entire internet and fuck up the world.
- lampe3 5y ago
  Can you explain what you mean?
swalsh 5y ago
Finally, I can be as protected as my dog!
mrfusion 5y ago
But lyme is a bacteria, not a virus. So there’s not one obvious protein to have the rna produce. What are they making with the rna?
- corin_ 5y ago
  From the article: > VLA15 is the only active Lyme disease vaccine candidate in clinical development today, and covers six serotypes that are prevalent in North America and Europe. This investigational multivalent protein subunit vaccine targets the outer surface protein A (OspA) of Borrelia, an established mechanism of action for a Lyme disease vaccine. OspA is one of the most dominant surface proteins expressed by the bacteria when present in a tick. VLA15 has demonstrated strong immunogenicity and safety data in pre-clinical and clinical studies so far.
- snalty 5y ago
  Previous lyme disease vaccines used a membrane protein, so probably that.
jefflombardjr 5y ago
Would this help people who already had the disease? Similar to what is happening with Covid https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/vaccines-long-covid https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/vaccines-long-covid
darkerside 5y ago
I wonder if this might be effective as a treatment for chronic Lyme sufferers as well as a preventative measure.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  Unfortunately it won’t, as Chronic Lyme is most likely lingering damage triggered by the initial infection rather than an actual ongoing infection. There are some people who believe that chronic Lyme is caused by persistent hidden infections, but you have to cherry-pick a lot of evidence and ignore a lot of contradictory evidence to arrive at that conclusion. Regardless, it seems unlikely that the vaccine would help if the infection had some mechanism to hide from the immune system anyway, as they claim.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    Can you share what kind of evidence is typically cherry picked or ignored in service of that conclusion? Genuinely curious. If the infection does have that mechanism, would that invalidate the idea that a vaccine would be at all helpful?
    - CountDrewku 5y ago
      Not sure if there's evidence for that but it's much more likely to be the case. There's no solid evidence "chronic lyme" exists either. The only "doctor's" you'll see treating it are typically into the naturopathic stuff and all other sorts of unproven treatments for things the medical community doesn't even agree exist.
      - darkerside 5y ago
        It's funny how it sometimes happens that the scientific or medical community makes a decision. I'm not quite sure how it happens, but once it's done, you need an overwhelming amount of evidence to overturn it. Much more than if the decision had never been made in the first place. Who makes these decisions, and on what grounds? I honestly don't know. Edit: But my theory is that it's based on informal groupthink.
cblconfederate 5y ago
I assume that mRNA will vaccinate for a lot of diseases, which means that a lot of new viruses will emerge through this evolutionary pressure. It's possible that we are also starting the same race as with antibiotics. Which is still better than people dying from these tiny evil viruses
- bxrxdx 5y ago
  That's not really how it works, First, vaccines prevent infection in the first place so the virus never has a chance to replicate and mutate, unlike antibiotics which are given after infection and there are a massive number of bacteria and only the most resistant survive. Second, there isn't anything about vaccine acquired immunity thats different from infection acquired immunity, so any evolutionary pressure would already be there.
  - desine 5y ago
    > First, vaccines prevent infection in the first place so the virus never has a chance to replicate and mutate Ideally, yes, but in practice people still tend to develop a viral load, their immune system kicks in faster, and the result is a very brief infection. >Second, there isn't anything about vaccine acquired immunity thats different from infection acquired immunity This is not true with the mRNA vaccines.
- jliptzin 5y ago
  Are there really a lot of viruses lying in wait for current viruses to get out of the way before they can start spreading? I find that hard to believe
darkerside 5y ago
How will they test for efficacy? Lyme is notoriously hard to test for. Are they going to test for antibodies? Because that seems ripe for conflation.
jashephe 5y ago
I'm confused. Where does this say the vaccine is mRNA? The Valneva VLA15 website explicitly states "VLA15 is a multivalent recombinant protein vaccine" [1], and the linked press release calls it a "investigational multivalent protein subunit vaccine". Does nobody actually read these things? See [2], "Subunit Vaccines". [1] https://valneva.com/research-development/lyme-disease/ https://valneva.com/research-development/lyme-disease/ [2] https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/vaccine-types https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/vaccine-types
- epistasis 5y ago
  You are right. Perhaps people saw "Pfizer" and made some assumptions based on Pfizer's work with the BioNTech mRNA vaccine. Here, the originator of the vaccine is Valneva, which started their phase 1 trial in 2017: https://www.newsweek.com/lyme-disease-vaccine-valneva-fda-approva-641796 https://www.newsweek.com/lyme-disease-vaccine-valneva-fda-ap...
  - ghaff 5y ago
    It's not just the OP. I've heard from multiple sources that "Pfizer has an mRNA vaccine for Lyme in clinical trials." Somewhere along the line someone(s) saw Pfizer, vaccine, and put 1 and 1 together and got 3. And it spread. This is the first time I realized that's not true.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I've heard it described as such but, no, it seems to be a distinct if perhaps somewhat related type of vaccine? (UPDATED: It's not.) The company that actually created the vaccine is also unrelated to the company that developed the vaccine that Pfizer is currently distributing for COVID.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    There is no relation to mRNA vaccine tech, this is a traditional style of protein vaccine. https://valneva.com/research-development/lyme-disease/ https://valneva.com/research-development/lyme-disease/
taf2 5y ago
Does this have the potential of helping people who already contracted the disease?
t0m4 5y ago
Is it really an mRNA vaccine ? It seems to be a 'multivalent protein subunit vaccine' [0] [0] https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2020/Valneva-and-Pfizer-Announce-Collaboration-to-Co-Develop-and-Commercialize-Lyme-Disease-Vaccine-VLA15/default.aspx https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-det...
andrea81 5y ago
Do you have any links to the raw clinical trials data?
foxhop 5y ago
About 8 weeks ago I was bitten by a tick and contracted Lyme Disease and I put my story up on YouTube to try to help others, let's just say it's a crazy ride downhill if you neglect the bacterial infection: https://youtu.be/xbPr7DHwSIw https://youtu.be/xbPr7DHwSIw In the video I talk about the treatment I followed to recover. Today symptoms appear gone but there have been testimony of hidden, lingering, or reoccurring issues after infection. All that said, I still do not fully trust mRNA vaccines. Ticks carry a huge array of illness, bacteria and virus besides just BB. If you are into Permaculture or Solar Punk, my 1/3 acre plot has a mini Food Forest and is a stones throw away from Lyme Connecticut where Lyme Disease was first observed affecting people and children. Like the video if you want to see more.
- Elinvynia 5y ago
  Why don't you fully trust mRNA vaccines?
Gupie 5y ago
How effective would such a vaccine need to be? A vaccine of say 70% might be effective enough for herd immunity for a disease that is contagious person to person. But you don't get Lyme disease from other people so herd immunity is not possible, unless the intention is to inoculate deer, (no pun intended).
- ghaff 5y ago
  As a benchmark, the dengue fever vaccine (Dengvaxia) is about 60-70% effective and is very effective at suppressing the worst symptoms, but may actually put the person being vaccinated under more risk of serious symptoms if they've never had Dengue before and manage to catch it anyway post-vax. Dengue is an unusual disease in that, to simplify somewhat--there are actually 4 strains--catching Dengue a second time can be much more serious than the first time. Anyway, between the effectiveness, possible side effects, and the aforementioned risk, it's not considered a great vaccine and it's authorized for fairly limited use in the US.
OliverJones 5y ago
They can probably recruit plenty of subjects from longtime residents of Old Lyme, Connecticut, USA, and Ipswich, MA, USA, where the disease started to take hold. This is good stuff. I hope they make it through efficacy (Phase 2) and safety (Phase 3) trials with good results.
erglkjlqrg 5y ago
Fuck your vaccine. Fuck everyone on this site that wants vaccines. GO TO FUCKING HELL.
erglkjlqrg 5y ago
cocksucking commie fucks
redis_mlc 5y ago
Interesting. US doctors who billed for Lyme disease were called quacks until recently, and some had their billings denied. Yet now there's a vaccine. Hmmm. So much for MSM "science" reporting, right dang?
shitmonger 5y ago
Only nazis promote violence like forced vaccinations. Are you a nazi?

350 points by pama 5y ago

tes123456789

The first vaccine had a problem where it gave people Lyme every once in a while. My hypothesis is that Lyme disease is an autoimmune disease caused by being exposed too acutely in some way, or for too long. For some people, a tick byte isn’t enough exposure to trigger it. For others, the vaccine is enough. They didn’t catch it early in clinical trials because those people are rare enough to not show up in small studies. So by that logic, the same thing should happen here. Maybe this time it will be a small enough group of people to shove under the rug. There’s no medicine in the world that doesn’t harm people in some capacity.

acdha 5y ago
> The first vaccine had a problem where it gave people Lyme every once in a while. Do you have a citation for that? The FDA review didn’t mention that: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/
- supperburg 5y ago
  > 59 reports of arthritis associated with vaccination Maybe it was coincidence. I’m just saying if the vaccine gave people Lyme, here’s my hypothesis. But it makes a lot of sense that an autoimmune disease created by exposure to X could be triggered by a vaccine containing X. The definition of a vaccine is to expose a person to whatever it is the immune system recognizes — spike proteins and so on. It’s plausible. But as you point out, not very likely.
  - 542354234235 5y ago
    Let's include the entire quote >By 2001, with over 1·4 million Lyme vaccine doses distributed in the United States the VAERS database included 905 reports of mild self-limited reactions and 59 reports of arthritis associated with vaccination [29]. The arthritis incidence in the patients receiving Lyme vaccine occurred at the same rate as the background in unvaccinated individuals. In addition, the data did not show a temporal spike in arthritis diagnoses after the second and third vaccine dose expected for an immune-mediated phenomenon. The FDA found no suggestion that the Lyme vaccine caused harm to its recipients. 54,000,000 Americans have had some form of arthritis [1]. I don’t exactly find it compelling that 0.0001% of them also happened to have gotten a vaccine.
    - supperburg 5y ago
      That’s pretty much what I said
timonoko 5y ago
Emphasis should be on tick-bite prevention. I have never had live tick on me and have been literally wallowing on all tick-infested areas on northern hemisphere. They just die. Most probably just drop off, but sometimes there is dead tick only slightly attached. Looks like they die on first drop of blood.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  Interestingly, what you described might just be a side effect of tick bite exposure ... https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/health/lyme-disease/2015/08/01/how-one-local-mans-immunity-ticks-could-save-us-all/30578799/ https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/health/lyme-d...
  - timonoko 5y ago
    Sounds true. I actually had one and only tick in 1955. It was on my testicles, so very embarrassing.
    - reustle 5y ago
      It's pretty hard to say that confidently with how small deer ticks are. I find them crawling on me all the time in Pennsylvania, and those are just the larger ones. Have found a few deer ticks on me over the years, and good luck finding them in your hair without someone else to look.
      - timonoko 5y ago
        I mean of course that I have never had a tick which managed to suck anything, except once in 1955. Also I remember being drunk and watching Ixodes Ricinus move along my arm and trying to stick its nose thru skin. Everytime it backed up real fast, like it found something nasty inside. Very much the same thing as American deer tick Ixodes scapularis.

dovebird 5y ago

PSA: This site (HN) has been overun by shills. Beware.

dovebird 5y ago

PSA: This site (HN) has been overun by s-h-ills. Beware.

mantas 5y ago

As someone who had Lyme twice.... YES PLEASE.

aixi 5y ago

Ever since I moved to the 'first world' I've been scared of this disease. We don't have it where I come from and the long term effects sound straight up terrible.

zz865 5y ago
Me too, and with Zika and Covid I feel like I've gone back to the dark ages of diseases.
- giantg2 5y ago
  That's the cost of fast international travel without health screenings or true quarantines.
mantas 5y ago
It's super easy to treat if caught early. But that's where the good ends. Vast majority of cases present the infamous circle. But some don't. And if you got the circle in a hard-to-notice spot, it's easy to miss it (it will a month or two into infection) too. First precaution is to check your legs (and possibly torso/hands) for ticks after passing through high grass. And whole body after coming from the woods. The nasty bit is you may bring ticks home, they stay active for a while and they may bite someone else. If you get a rash in a weird spot and you've been out in the woods in the past 48 hours, check it out thoroughly. You may have a tick there. I've had countless ticks hiding in weird places that I found due to weird itchy-rashy feeling. Once you get the tick, remove it in a safe manner asap. Lyme is transferred after the tick is done feeding and about to take off. Which is ~48 hours. Personally Lyme Encephalitis is much scarier. Not as common, but long term effects are much more likely and even worse. On the bright side, there's a vaccine for it.
- burntwater 5y ago
  Mostly good advice, except for the one comment: >Vast majority of cases present the infamous circle. But some don't. I believe it's actually the other way around, only 20-30% of cases show the "typical" bullseye.

happyhardcore 5y ago

Can anyone give some insight as to why a vaccine hasn't been possible using more traditional technology?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
_Microft 5y ago
There was one but it was taken off the market. It's a bit of a sad story because it worked but because of unfounded claims that it had side effects, it lost trust of the public: "In clinical trials involving more than 10,000 people, the vaccine, called LYMErix, was found to confer protective immunity to Borrelia in 76% of adults and 100% of children with only mild or moderate and transient adverse effects. [...] Subsequently, hundreds of vaccine recipients reported they had developed autoimmune and other side effects. Supported by some advocacy groups, a number of class-action lawsuits were filed against GlaxoSmithKline, alleging the vaccine had caused these health problems. These claims were investigated by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control, which found no connection between the vaccine and the autoimmune complaints. Despite the lack of evidence that the complaints were caused by the vaccine, sales plummeted and LYMErix was withdrawn from the U.S. market by GlaxoSmithKline in February 2002, in the setting of negative media coverage and fears of vaccine side effects.", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Vaccination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Vaccination
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
  Unfounded claims from 100s of people developing imaginary autoimmune disorders? Mind you people are still getting compensated in court for autoimmune disorders arising from the Hep-B vaccine, even though no causal link was found. Just yesterday I had to accompany my sister to the phlebologist, because of severe side-effects from Pfizer, he told us he was seeing troves of patients for similar reasons even though officially no causal-link was established. At some point you have to wonder if health-policy takes precedence over truthful reporting when it comes to vaccines. (I'm "pro-vax" btw, I was the one who convinced my sister to go take her dose even though she's quite young. Now I feel like a moron.)

Thaxll 5y ago

Why is it a vaccine? Are there going to be vaccine for everything in the future?

mschuster91 5y ago
> Are there going to be vaccine for everything in the future? For a lot of stuff, the answer is probably yes, mRNA based vaccines are a revolutionary game changer - their quick turnaround time means you can actually tailor them to a specific cancer or pathogen the patient has and use the patient's own immune system to fight against the disease. Another advantage of mRNA is that manufacture doesn't depend on chicken eggs which take about six months to produce, are challenging to keep sterile enough and have issues for people with allergies (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/27/health/chicken-egg-flu-vaccine-intl-hnk-scli/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/27/health/chicken-egg-flu-va...). However, some viruses like HIV or Influenza mutate so much that it was hard to make effective viruses, we will have to wait and see what the future brings there.
dovebird 5y ago
Yes. The beauty of the Vaccine is that it sells on fear. And there is no limit to which a human being can be scared...
- mantas 5y ago
  Lyme is one of those disease where fear is valid to say the least.
mantas 5y ago
Because Lyme disease is hard to catch early. And long-lasting Lyme is damn hard to treat with lots of side effects.
Tycho 5y ago
I think thanks to Covid booster shots they realise they can pivot to a Vaccine-as-a-Service model and create all sorts of recurring revenue streams.

dovebird 5y ago

Is there a way to compensate people who get injured as part of these trials? These people.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mxqC9SiRh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mxqC9SiRh8 We hear "Vaccine trials" and handwave this as someone elses problem. But these people, being naive, never thought they would get their lives destroyed. But now it seems that they cannot even get doctors to look into their conditions, and has to live as some sort of societal reject..

_Microft 5y ago

Prepare to read the headline "mRNA vaccine trial for <...>" a lot in the future. My guess is that they are going to produce mRNA versions of basically any vaccine (and then some) in the future. The nice thing about the technology seems to be that you only need to exchange the mRNA payload while the surrounding delivery method can be reused. That makes it not only a fast method to create a vaccine but a very convenient way as well. Nice side effect might be that for the next pandemic, we might have doses for everyone ready at the moment the trials are done. Take that with a giant grain of salt because I'm not in the industry.

ianhawes 5y ago
The biggest investment that Pfizer made was the creation of a way to reliably manufacture mRNA vaccines. Now they must recoup those investments.
- swalsh 5y ago
  I think the term you're looking for is capitalize. Pfizer made some investments in a technology that had wide applications, and now they want to capitalize on it. It's good business, and a lot of people are going to be helped in the process.
- lampe3 5y ago
  Can you name any big company that does not work that way? Like Apple, Facebook, Ford, Tesla, Nestle ect ect. And what would be an alternative?
  - ianhawes 5y ago
    My understanding is that it has been known for years that mRNA is a viable vaccine delivery vector, but the R&D hadn't been completed for the other aspect of the business - production and safety at scale.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Afaik, it was backed up behind a lack of safety trials. Given how expensive those are to run, and how mRNA's primary benefit (speed of development) wasn't a competitive advantage in "normal" times, we had something that we thought was better, but no financial case to toss the gobs of money at it to get it certified. If SARS-CoV-2 is remembered for one thing, it should be for finally breaking the logjam and "giving" us approved mRNA platforms.

dovebird 5y ago

I posted a comment about the people who are injured in these trials and it got insta-flagged. Here is what I wrote without the link to the video. Just want to see if this gets flagged/removed as well.. >Is there a way to compensate people who get injured as part of these trials? These people.. -- link to video removed -- We hear "Vaccine trials" and handwave this as someone elses problem. But these people, being naive, never thought they would get their lives destroyed. But now it seems that they cannot even get doctors to look into their conditions, and has to live as some sort of societal reject..

timonoko 5y ago

Emphasis should be on tick-bite prevention. I have never had live tick on me and have been literally wallowing on all tick-infested areas of northern hemisphere. They just die. Most probably just drop off, but sometimes there is dead tick only slightly attached. Looks like they die on first drop of blood.

_Microft 5y ago
People developing immunity to ticks has been reported. We discussed that here half a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28281523 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28281523

nikkinana 5y ago

Oh another mandatory money flow stream incoming! Get your mRNA vax card now folks.

seren 5y ago

This is Phase 2, but I wonder how long Phase 3 will take, given that getting Lyme disease is still pretty rare, can easily be missed or misdiagnosed, it will takes a lot of time and people to get a significant effect between a control group and vaccinated people

pirate787 5y ago
Lyme is not rare, the CDC estimates 476,000 cases per year in the US. https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/humancases.html https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/humancases.html
- nverno 5y ago
  where I used to live in NH signs posted around trailheads said something like 30% of deer ticks were likely carrying Lyme, and that was 5 years ago.
- seren 5y ago
  Thanks, that is certainly more than I would have expected!
astura 5y ago
Lyme disease is very common on the northeast coast of the United States nowadays. The disease is increasing every year due to a massive increase in deer and mice and is considered a major public health issue. Since 14 states account for 95% of infections it might seem like a rare disease if you live outside of those 14 states.
matt_the_bass 5y ago
Not rare in New England. I’ve contracted it twice since the beginning of covid. And once 23 years ago. The first time I was sick for a year even with treatment. These last two times I caught it early but still suffered for months and my body hurts with changes in the weather. I wish I’d had the vaccine.

KronisLV 5y ago

I actually had Lyme disease when i was younger. Curiously enough, i didn't get the somewhat common rash after the tick bite, but instead it was discovered later, as a part of blood testing. I was submitted to that after my relatives had concerns about how lethargic i was being, as well as because i was experiencing joint pain, which the blood test later seemed to confirm. If i recall correctly, i was given antibiotics and felt pretty bad for a month onwards, though nowadays i'm not aware of any lingering long term effects, apart from maybe my short term memory being slightly worse than i'd expect it to. Of course, i think that in my case i had it pretty easy, since some other folks are known to develop symptoms that are considerably more worse. Whether there will be any lingering consequences in my future because of it, only time will tell. A vaccine would definitely be welcome, especially because of how common ticks are here in Eastern Europe - any walk in the forest might end with more than one of them on your clothes. If you have dogs, you'll probably have to remove dozens of those from their fur every summer.

Inhibit 5y ago
In a side note I usually read that those rashes are only present in 30% of cases or so. Probably good advice to get checked out if you suspect an infection. Multiple times, if necessary, as the testing also doesn't appear to have a high degree of accuracy.
- dejv 5y ago
  Yeah, got lyme disease one month ago and there was no rashes as well. Good idea is to send the tick to laboratory for testing, it will take quite some time (week or two) but better than nothing.

menduza23 5y ago

I love Pfizer. They censor the entire internet and fuck up the world.

lampe3 5y ago
Can you explain what you mean?

swalsh 5y ago

Finally, I can be as protected as my dog!

mrfusion 5y ago

But lyme is a bacteria, not a virus. So there’s not one obvious protein to have the rna produce. What are they making with the rna?

corin_ 5y ago
From the article: > VLA15 is the only active Lyme disease vaccine candidate in clinical development today, and covers six serotypes that are prevalent in North America and Europe. This investigational multivalent protein subunit vaccine targets the outer surface protein A (OspA) of Borrelia, an established mechanism of action for a Lyme disease vaccine. OspA is one of the most dominant surface proteins expressed by the bacteria when present in a tick. VLA15 has demonstrated strong immunogenicity and safety data in pre-clinical and clinical studies so far.
snalty 5y ago
Previous lyme disease vaccines used a membrane protein, so probably that.

jefflombardjr 5y ago

Would this help people who already had the disease? Similar to what is happening with Covid https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/vaccines-long-covid https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/vaccines-long-covid

darkerside 5y ago

I wonder if this might be effective as a treatment for chronic Lyme sufferers as well as a preventative measure.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Unfortunately it won’t, as Chronic Lyme is most likely lingering damage triggered by the initial infection rather than an actual ongoing infection. There are some people who believe that chronic Lyme is caused by persistent hidden infections, but you have to cherry-pick a lot of evidence and ignore a lot of contradictory evidence to arrive at that conclusion. Regardless, it seems unlikely that the vaccine would help if the infection had some mechanism to hide from the immune system anyway, as they claim.
- darkerside 5y ago
  Can you share what kind of evidence is typically cherry picked or ignored in service of that conclusion? Genuinely curious. If the infection does have that mechanism, would that invalidate the idea that a vaccine would be at all helpful?
  - CountDrewku 5y ago
    Not sure if there's evidence for that but it's much more likely to be the case. There's no solid evidence "chronic lyme" exists either. The only "doctor's" you'll see treating it are typically into the naturopathic stuff and all other sorts of unproven treatments for things the medical community doesn't even agree exist.
    - darkerside 5y ago
      It's funny how it sometimes happens that the scientific or medical community makes a decision. I'm not quite sure how it happens, but once it's done, you need an overwhelming amount of evidence to overturn it. Much more than if the decision had never been made in the first place. Who makes these decisions, and on what grounds? I honestly don't know. Edit: But my theory is that it's based on informal groupthink.

cblconfederate 5y ago

I assume that mRNA will vaccinate for a lot of diseases, which means that a lot of new viruses will emerge through this evolutionary pressure. It's possible that we are also starting the same race as with antibiotics. Which is still better than people dying from these tiny evil viruses

bxrxdx 5y ago
That's not really how it works, First, vaccines prevent infection in the first place so the virus never has a chance to replicate and mutate, unlike antibiotics which are given after infection and there are a massive number of bacteria and only the most resistant survive. Second, there isn't anything about vaccine acquired immunity thats different from infection acquired immunity, so any evolutionary pressure would already be there.
- desine 5y ago
  > First, vaccines prevent infection in the first place so the virus never has a chance to replicate and mutate Ideally, yes, but in practice people still tend to develop a viral load, their immune system kicks in faster, and the result is a very brief infection. >Second, there isn't anything about vaccine acquired immunity thats different from infection acquired immunity This is not true with the mRNA vaccines.
jliptzin 5y ago
Are there really a lot of viruses lying in wait for current viruses to get out of the way before they can start spreading? I find that hard to believe

darkerside 5y ago

How will they test for efficacy? Lyme is notoriously hard to test for. Are they going to test for antibodies? Because that seems ripe for conflation.

jashephe 5y ago

I'm confused. Where does this say the vaccine is mRNA? The Valneva VLA15 website explicitly states "VLA15 is a multivalent recombinant protein vaccine" [1], and the linked press release calls it a "investigational multivalent protein subunit vaccine". Does nobody actually read these things? See [2], "Subunit Vaccines". [1] https://valneva.com/research-development/lyme-disease/ https://valneva.com/research-development/lyme-disease/ [2] https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/vaccine-types https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/vaccine-types

epistasis 5y ago
You are right. Perhaps people saw "Pfizer" and made some assumptions based on Pfizer's work with the BioNTech mRNA vaccine. Here, the originator of the vaccine is Valneva, which started their phase 1 trial in 2017: https://www.newsweek.com/lyme-disease-vaccine-valneva-fda-approva-641796 https://www.newsweek.com/lyme-disease-vaccine-valneva-fda-ap...
- ghaff 5y ago
  It's not just the OP. I've heard from multiple sources that "Pfizer has an mRNA vaccine for Lyme in clinical trials." Somewhere along the line someone(s) saw Pfizer, vaccine, and put 1 and 1 together and got 3. And it spread. This is the first time I realized that's not true.
ghaff 5y ago
I've heard it described as such but, no, it seems to be a distinct if perhaps somewhat related type of vaccine? (UPDATED: It's not.) The company that actually created the vaccine is also unrelated to the company that developed the vaccine that Pfizer is currently distributing for COVID.
- epistasis 5y ago
  There is no relation to mRNA vaccine tech, this is a traditional style of protein vaccine. https://valneva.com/research-development/lyme-disease/ https://valneva.com/research-development/lyme-disease/

taf2 5y ago

Does this have the potential of helping people who already contracted the disease?

t0m4 5y ago

Is it really an mRNA vaccine ? It seems to be a 'multivalent protein subunit vaccine' [0] [0] https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2020/Valneva-and-Pfizer-Announce-Collaboration-to-Co-Develop-and-Commercialize-Lyme-Disease-Vaccine-VLA15/default.aspx https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-det...

andrea81 5y ago

Do you have any links to the raw clinical trials data?

foxhop 5y ago

About 8 weeks ago I was bitten by a tick and contracted Lyme Disease and I put my story up on YouTube to try to help others, let's just say it's a crazy ride downhill if you neglect the bacterial infection: https://youtu.be/xbPr7DHwSIw https://youtu.be/xbPr7DHwSIw In the video I talk about the treatment I followed to recover. Today symptoms appear gone but there have been testimony of hidden, lingering, or reoccurring issues after infection. All that said, I still do not fully trust mRNA vaccines. Ticks carry a huge array of illness, bacteria and virus besides just BB. If you are into Permaculture or Solar Punk, my 1/3 acre plot has a mini Food Forest and is a stones throw away from Lyme Connecticut where Lyme Disease was first observed affecting people and children. Like the video if you want to see more.

Elinvynia 5y ago
Why don't you fully trust mRNA vaccines?

Gupie 5y ago

How effective would such a vaccine need to be? A vaccine of say 70% might be effective enough for herd immunity for a disease that is contagious person to person. But you don't get Lyme disease from other people so herd immunity is not possible, unless the intention is to inoculate deer, (no pun intended).

ghaff 5y ago
As a benchmark, the dengue fever vaccine (Dengvaxia) is about 60-70% effective and is very effective at suppressing the worst symptoms, but may actually put the person being vaccinated under more risk of serious symptoms if they've never had Dengue before and manage to catch it anyway post-vax. Dengue is an unusual disease in that, to simplify somewhat--there are actually 4 strains--catching Dengue a second time can be much more serious than the first time. Anyway, between the effectiveness, possible side effects, and the aforementioned risk, it's not considered a great vaccine and it's authorized for fairly limited use in the US.

OliverJones 5y ago

They can probably recruit plenty of subjects from longtime residents of Old Lyme, Connecticut, USA, and Ipswich, MA, USA, where the disease started to take hold. This is good stuff. I hope they make it through efficacy (Phase 2) and safety (Phase 3) trials with good results.

erglkjlqrg 5y ago

Fuck your vaccine. Fuck everyone on this site that wants vaccines. GO TO FUCKING HELL.

erglkjlqrg 5y ago

cocksucking commie fucks

redis_mlc 5y ago

Interesting. US doctors who billed for Lyme disease were called quacks until recently, and some had their billings denied. Yet now there's a vaccine. Hmmm. So much for MSM "science" reporting, right dang?

shitmonger 5y ago

Only nazis promote violence like forced vaccinations. Are you a nazi?