A t my animal hospital in upstate New York, an epicenter of the U.S. tick epidemic, my dog Fawn lets out a whimper as the veterinarian injects her wit

We Used to Have a Lyme Disease Vaccine. Are We Ready to Bring One Back?

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2021-06-20 12:00:05

A t my animal hospital in upstate New York, an epicenter of the U.S. tick epidemic, my dog Fawn lets out a whimper as the veterinarian injects her with her annual Lyme disease shot. I roll my eyes. She doesn’t know how good she has it.

The injection means that if a tick bites her (and in rural New York, a tick always does), the creepy crawly will feast on dog blood that’s been supercharged with a Lyme bacteria-killing substance, and Lyme disease won’t be transmitted to Fawn.

I wish I could be shot up with that superpower. Currently, there is no human vaccine for Lyme disease—even though more than two decades ago, people could get a safe and effective preventative shot similar to Fawn’s. Now, thanks to potent anti-vaccine pushback, all we can do is try to avoid getting bitten by the tiny, vampiric nightmares. A tick can’t fly or jump; instead, it “quests,” or waits on a blade of grass or on the leaf of a bush for you, your dog or any other furry host to brush by. It then crawls up your body, finds a good place to feed, cuts your skin open with tiny incisors and sticks in a feeding tube, through which it slowly takes a blood meal. You don’t feel any of this, thanks to a numbing substance in tick saliva that lets it feed in secret (so good luck trying to swat a tick away).

And that’s the benign part. Once a tick starts sucking your blood, its saliva—which can carry all sorts of pathogens—enters your bloodstream. That’s how people contract Lyme disease, by far the most common vector-borne illness in the U.S., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A rash shows up at the bite site in about 70-80% of people who ultimately are determined to have Lyme. In those cases, it’s relatively straightforward to diagnose and treat with several weeks of antibiotics, which work best when given early on in the infection. But if you don’t get that rash, you might not even know you’ve been bitten, and fever, headache, fatigue, chills and joint pain can come on with no warning. Later signs of Lyme can include nerve pain, neck stiffness, sudden weakness in facial muscles, arthritis, heart palpitations, cognitive problems and brain and spinal cord inflammation. Some cases become chronic—what the CDC calls “post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome”—with mysterious symptoms lasting more than six months after treatment.