Did you know that over 400,000 individuals in North America are affected every year with Lyme disease? Although this is a growing problem, vaccines are still in the development phase. One promising lead points to mRNA vaccines as effective for fighting Lyme.

We've put together a fully-editable, comprehensive infographic that explains how it works and how it could prevent disease in millions of people.

What is Lyme disease?

Lyme disease is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi, a type of spiral-shaped bacteria that is transmitted to humans through the bites of black-legged ticks. Common symptoms include elevated body temperature, aching head, exhaustion, and a distinctive skin rash known as erythema migrans. If not addressed, the infection has the potential to extend to the joints, heart, and nervous system.

What are mRNA vaccines?

Vaccines introduce pathogen-like particles to the body to build immunity against the wildtype pathogen. mRNA vaccines, like the Lyme vaccine, do not contain the pathogen itself but rather mRNA coding for proteins associated with it.

How does the Lyme vaccine work?

Although more than 400,000 individuals in North America are affected every year, Lyme vaccines are still in the development phase, such as the mRNA vaccine developed by Sajid et al. (2021). The vaccinated immune system is able to react quicker to a tick bite, and prevent bacterial transmission.

Here is the response timeline of the Lyme vaccine when compared to unvaccinated immune response after a tick bite.

Full Downloadable Infographic (Square)

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Full Downloadable Infographic (Long)

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Acknowledgements
Special thank you to the BioRender Creative team including Avila Sanchez, Joshua Koentjoro, Tal Bavli, Jerry Gu, Samara Mishelle Oña Chuquimarca and Cindy Liu.

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References

1. Medlineplus. (2022). https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/therapy/mrnavaccines/
2. Jain, S., Venkataraman, A., Wechsler, M. E., & Peppas, N. A. (2021). Messenger RNA-based vaccines: Past, present, and future directions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Advanced drug delivery reviews, 179, 114000. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addr.2021.114000
3. Sajid, A., Matias, J., Arora, G., Kurokawa, C., DePonte, K., Tang, X., Lynn, G., Wu, M.-J., Pal, U., Strank, N. O., Pardi, N., Narasimhan, S., Weissman, D., & Fikrig, E. (2021). mRNA vaccination induces tick resistance and prevents transmission of the Lyme disease agent. Science Translational Medicine., 13(620). https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.abj9827
4. Mayoclinic. (2022). https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/different-types-of-covid-19-vaccines/art-20506465
5. CDC. (2022). https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/index.html#:~:text=Lyme%20disease%20is%20caused%20by,skin%20rash%20called%20erythema%20migrans.