The test is based on a multifaceted approach: it is no longer just one but six biomarkers that are sought.
Diagnosing Lyme disease is complicated: the symptoms are difficult to identify and can appear within 30 days of being bitten by a tick. A research team from the University of Arizona now offers a new screening test more efficient and faster. She presents it in the review Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.
A disease with multiple consequences
Lyme borreliosis is transmitted by infected ticks. The appearance of a red plaque around the bite is the first symptom, sometimes accompanied by fever, muscle and/or joint pain. If left untreated, the disease then causes arthritis and various lesions (skin, heart or neurological).
Six biomarkers
When symptoms appear early enough, the diagnosis may be easier to make because the bite mark is still present. Otherwise, doctors use serological tests, but many professionals consider them insufficiently reliable. In this new research, the team has chosen to change its approach: instead of looking for a marker of Lyme disease, they test for six, which can potentially indicate contamination. “A single test misses a lot of patients,” says the study’s lead author, Joshua LaBaer. This new test is based on the use of different forms of examinations and different techniques such as mass spectrometry or immunoprecipitation. The first makes it possible to identify molecules by measuring their mass and the second makes it possible to identify proteins at levels not detectable by other techniques. For the time being, the test has only been carried out on animal models, the researchers hope to be able to test it soon on humans.
Lyme disease affects approximately 27,000 people each year in France.
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