All Posts Tagged With: "Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb)"

Full Article: http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&id=20392886&retmode=ref&cmd=prlinks

Excerpt:

Neurobiology and Pain Therapeutics Section, Laboratory of Sensory
Biology, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research,
Laboratory of Clinical Infectious Diseases, National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Disease, National Institutes of Health,
Bethesda, MD 20892.

There is currently a need for improved serological tests for the
diagnosis and monitoring of Lyme disease, an infection caused by
Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb).
Here, we evaluated Luciferase Immunoprecipitation Systems (LIPS)
for profiling antibody responses to a panel of Bb proteins for
diagnosis of Lyme disease.
Initially, a training serum cohort of patients and controls
(n=46) was profiled using 15 different Bb antigen constructs. In
the patient sera, antibody responses to several Bb antigens
including VlsE, Flagellin (FlaB), BmpA, DbpA, and DbpB, showed
high levels of immunoreactivity. However, the best diagnostic
performance was achieved with a synthetic protein, designated as
VOVO, consisting of a repeated antigenic VlsE-OspC-VlsE-OspC
peptide sequence.

Excerpt:

Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) represents the third most common cause of heart
failure and the most frequent cause of heart transplantation. Infectious, mostly
viral, and autoimmune mechanisms, together with genetic abnormalities, have been
reported as three major causes of DCM. We hypothesized that Lyme disease (LD),
caused by spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), might be an important cause of
new-onset unexplained DCM in patients living in a highly endemic area for LD
such as the Czech Republic. Continued