This technology is an immunoassay for early-stage detection and monitoring of Lyme disease.
Current methods to diagnose Lyme disease are based on detecting antibody response to Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme disease. However, these methods fail to diagnose early stages of the disease and are not indicative of an active infection. Additionally, these methods are unable to report on the progress of treatment due to the nature of antibody detection. As such, there is a need for a diagnostic method that can detect early-stage Lyme disease and benchmark disease progression.
This technology measures the blood serum levels of two acute phase response proteins in order to detect early stage Lyme disease and post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS). This assay identifies a correlation between elevated levels of these specific proteins and Borrelia bacteria concentrations in the blood and skin during the earliest stage of the disease, when conventional diagnostics are unreliable. Additionally, this technology measures levels of a specific protein found to be elevated in PTLDS, which current diagnostic assays cannot detect. Taken together, this technology promises to improve management of Lyme disease by providing both early detection and follow-up assessment of treatment efficacy.
This technology has been validated using samples from patients with active Lyme disease or PTLDS.
Patent Pending
IR CU17229
Licensing Contact: Jerry Kokoshka