Scientists still don’t know how to explain the bacteria that causes the disease, which can be debilitating for some and cause them to suffer for many years. But for others, it is a relatively mild illness. Lyme tests have a high rate of false negatives, especially when the disease is early on. This makes it difficult to detect the illness.
In a recent paper, PLOS PathogensAn international group of researchers reports on the most comprehensive analyses of the Borrelia burgdorferi genome to date, which provides clues about what’s causing more severe forms of the disease, and lays the foundation for developing better diagnostic tests and treatments. Data was collected from samples that were painstakingly taken by 299 Lyme sufferers in the northeastern U.S. and midwestern U.S. and Central Europe. Most of the samples were obtained from skin biopsy of bullseye shaped rashes, which is a classic early sign of infection. The scientists first isolated the bacteria from the biopsied skin samples, then correlated genetic signatures of the bacteria with the patients’ health outcomes. They were able to identify genes linked with more…
