got a wuestion for you science minded people::

[davet]

one of the sax players in our band is a general practitioneer as well as a great musicion...anyway i sent him info on Lymes disease which he thought his dog had...he said the info was great but for one thing..Lymes is caused by a spirochete bacteria,,,gonhorrhea is also cause by a spirochete as well as many other diseases andthere is a characteristic about spirochete that a vaccine cannot be made....which make me question wether the lymes vac is any good...he stopped using it in pople a long time ago.....anyone have any ideas?????

[davet]

syphliss (sp) rather than gonnorhea...

[k9Karen]

I think he's confused. Gonorrhea is caused by a gram-negative diplococcus, Neisseria gonorrhoeae. I suspect he's thinking of syphillis, which is caused by a spirochete bacterium, Treponema pallidum. I haven't heard that about making a vaccine against spirochetal bacteria, but I'll look and see what I can find. There might be something in one of my texts at work.

As for the human Lyme vaccine, I've not heard much good about it. Didn't the company that made it voluntarily take it off the market? Seems to me I remember something like they withdrew it from sales, claiming lack of use, but in reality it was to "save face", since the FDA was investigating it and it looked like they were going to force a recall. I remember reading an article that as many as 30% of the people who took the vaccine ended up with Lyme-like symptoms. The vaccine actually induced the formation of an antibody that attacked the joints. As for the canine version of the vaccine, I really don't know anything about it exept what was bantered about on AcmePet over the past couple of years. I'll see if I can find that article again.

Found the article:
http://www.1800lawinfo.com/practice/new ... ic=Lymerix

[BoxerTom]

You're right, there is no vaccine for syphilis, but I don't know if it's because it didn't work or they never tried. I know the lyme vaccine used now is recombinant dna sourced utilized surface protein.

[davet]

nm

[mjollnir]

generates an antibody to the OspA protein on the surface of the spirochete. In a dog, the OspA protein is not expressed by the spirochete (when the bacteria get passed from tick to dog, the increase in temperature turns off the OspA and turns on the OspC protein). When the tick feeds on a vaccinated dog, it ingests the antibodies to OspA, which then destroy the spirochete within the tick, before it can be transmitted to the dog.

[Amandasmom]

I worked for SmithKline when the lyme vaccine first came out. They gave us the shots for free. I didn't have any adverse reaction but the arthritis thing concerned me since I have davets knees. I don't think I'll jump on that bandwagon again.