Using peptide-based assays to improve the laboratory diagnosis of Lyme disease

Paul discusses the challenges facing the identification and diagnosis of Lyme disease. He describes the life cycle stages of the carrier, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato species, as well as the incidence and transmission of Lyme disease in the United States. There are differential expressions of antigenic surface proteins that occur due to bacterial transcriptional changes and throughout the course of the disease. Highly reactive serum was screened for responses against 21 different proteins using 80 overlapping peptides in the ProArray Ultra linear B cell epitope mapping tool to improve the specificity and accuracy of current diagnostic methods.