Development of a near-care diagnostic test for Lyme disease

Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne illness in North America. New cases of Lyme disease are on the rise throughout Canada, which has prompted increased awareness of the disease and raised issues with the currently available tests used for diagnosis. The current tests rely on detection of antibodies found in the patient's blood that are produced in response to bacteria that cause Lyme disease. Because these antibody responses develop over time and vary with degree of infection, the test can be problematic for diagnosing early infection, which may delay antibiotic therapy. Recently, there has been a push to identify additional non-antibody Lyme disease markers for use in diagnosis. This research will use a sensitive and powerful protein discovery approach to mine blood samples for new markers of Lyme disease. The proteins identified will be used to develop an improved test for detecting Lyme disease.