Lyme Disease Has Exploded, and a New Vaccine Is (Almost) Here
Lymerix was pulled from the market two decades ago. How much enthusiasm will there be for its replacement?
If you want to get vaccinated against Lyme disease today, your choices are limited. In fact, you’d have to find a rogue veterinarian willing to experiment on you. The only options on the market are for dogs.
This wasn’t always the case. In December 1998, drugmaker SmithKline Beecham Plc (now GSK Plc) got approval for the first Lyme vaccine for humans, Lymerix. Ads for the shot featured a woman on a verdant lawn who warns: “I got Lyme disease last spring, and I’m being treated for serious health problems. I couldn’t prevent it then, but now you could.” Lymerix was shown to prevent the disease about 75% of the time, which is pretty efficacious; the annual flu shot is between 40% and 60% effective, depending on the year. And Lymerix was an ingenious scientific achievement. It neutralized the bacteria that causes Lyme while it was still in the tick.