Given that dogs have a Lyme disease vaccine, it is particularly frustrating that their human companions remain vulnerable to the notorious illness. People with Lyme disease suffer serious symptoms including muscle and joint aches, headaches, fatigue, fevers, chills, swollen glands, stiff neck and poor appetite. Like COVID-19 and other illnesses, Lyme disease can be chronic, meaning some unfortunate souls bitten just once by a deer tick wind up struggling with the ailment for the rest of their lives.
Yet a recent paper published in the journal Nature Communications offers a glimmer of hope for those seeking an effective Lyme disease treatment — or, some might say, a glimmer of sweat.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology joined scientists at the University of Helsinki to isolate a protein in human sweat that protects against Lyme disease. Roughly one-third of all humans seem to carry a genetic variant of this protein that is associated with vulnerability to Lyme disease; the protein itself is at the gene encoding for Secretoglobin family 1D member 2, and is therefore known as the SCGB1D2 protein. While they do not understand how SCGB1D2 limits the growth of the Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria behind Lyme disease, they still believe that if properly harnessed the protein could form the basis of skin creams that either prevent the disease or treat especially persistent infections.
"These data suggest that SCGB1D2 is a host defense factor present in the skin, sweat, and other secretions which protects against [Borrelia burgdorferi] infection and opens an exciting therapeutic avenue for Lyme disease," the authors write in their study's abstract. According to a statement by Michal Caspi Tal, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and one of the study's senior authors, “This protein may provide some protection from Lyme disease, and we think there are real implications here for a preventative and possibly a therapeutic based on this protein.”
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