Word: lyme
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GOOD NEWS ON LYME...
...Nino's drenching rains. But they could be a booby trap for outdoors-loving Americans. Ready to pounce out of the dense vegetation on any passing body will be another effect of the moist, warmer-than-usual weather: battalions of speck-size ticks carrying the summertime scourge called Lyme disease...
Although the number of new cases of Lyme seemed to have peaked in the U.S. at 16,000 in 1996, public health officials are warning that this year's total could soar. Since the first mysterious outbreak of arthritis-like pain and fever among residents near the Connecticut community of Lyme in 1975, at least 100,000 Americans have been infected with the disease. Now endemic throughout the Northeast as well as parts of the Midwest and the West Coast, Lyme disease is caused by a corkscrew-shaped bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi. It is spread by the bite of ticks...
Until now, only antibiotics have worked against Lyme disease. But a new weapon may be at hand. After a nationwide clinical trial involving some 11,000 people, an advisory panel last week urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve a novel vaccine developed by SmithKline Beecham under the name Lymerix. The vaccine works when the tick is sucking the victim's blood, launching antibodies against the bacteria even before they've left the tick's gut. Although it took three shots over 12 months to achieve it, the vaccine gave immunity to 90% of the test subjects ages...
COLD-BLOODED CURE? Scientists may have discovered an unlikely way to fight Lyme disease: use lizard blood. Though a vaccine or treatment is still far off, early reports show that when infected ticks are bathed in lizard blood, the Lyme-disease bacteria are destroyed...