Tufts Researchers May Have Found New, More Efficient Lyme Disease Test

BOSTON (CBS) - We're fast approaching tick season and renewed concerns about Lyme disease, which affects almost a half million people in the U.S. every year but can be difficult to diagnose. Now local researchers may have found a better way to track it.

When someone develops Lyme disease, early testing may be negative. And then traditional tests can remain positive long after treatment making it hard to know whether someone has been re-infected.

But researchers at the Tufts University School of Medicine discovered that the bacterium that causes Lyme disease uses fats from the infected person to thrive which triggers the immune system to generate antibodies against those fats. The presence or absence of these antibodies could help identify early infection, whether treatment has been successful, and whether someone has been infected again.

They hope that a diagnostic test looking for these antibodies could be developed within the next few years.