Lyme Disease Vaccine For Humans Is Closer To Being Real

Ever wished there was a vaccine for Lyme Disease? Apparently one is closer to being real than you may think.

The human Lyme disease vaccine has been in the works for quite some time now, with many companies working on one.

But according to the Concord Monitor, a French biotech company called Valneva has recently announced that their vaccine, VLA15, has passed phase-one medical trials.

That means it was given to a small group of people for initial safety and effectiveness testing and no serious adverse events or cases of arthritis were observed.

The absence of arthritis is big because the last Lyme disease vaccine for humans, GlaxoSmithKline's LYMErix, was shown to cause an autoimmune reaction that lead to arthritis. (those results may not have been so accurate according to Vox.com.)

Also as GearJunkie.com reports, the new Lyme disease vaccine protects against six strains of Lyme instead of just the bacteria that causes the disease as LYMErix did. And it has proven to be 96 percent effective in preventing Lyme.

All meaning Valneva can move forward to phase-two testing this summer.

That will mean human volunteers who live in areas with a high risk of Lyme disease both in the U.S. and in Europe.

Lyme is the most common tick-borne disease in the Northern Hemisphere, with about 300,000 cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention each year, so it may not be crazy to see trials of this vaccine on the Southcoast.

For now, no word on where testing will take place or how one could become a volunteer.

The FDA has fast tracked this potential Lyme disease vaccine however, so expect more news on this potential vaccine as summer rolls on.