Immune system research may help predict who gets long-term complications from Lyme Disease
Thursday, April 17, 2014 - 12:30
in Health & Medicine
The groundwork has been laid for understanding how variations in immune responses to Lyme disease can contribute to the many different outcomes of this bacterial infection seen in individual patients. "Physicians have recognized for many years that Lyme disease is not a uniform disease process and can vary in outcomes," says the senior author of the report. "Our experiments have linked such differences to specific immune pathways controlled by elements of the immune system, which in turn might help us understand both the good immune processes that clear up the infection and the bad ones that cause injury and prolong symptoms. This could be a big step forward in managing this disease."