Study finds method to diagnose Lyme disease within 15 minutes

Washington: Researchers have developed a new treatment method capable of detecting Lyme disease in just 15 minutes.
Caused by Borrelia burgdorferi and transmitted by the bite of infected Ixodes ticks, Lyme disease if left untreated can cause serious neurologic, cardiac, and/or rheumatologic complications.
“Our findings are the first to demonstrate that Lyme disease diagnosis can be carried out in a microfluidic format that can provide rapid quantitative results,” said Sam Sia, professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering.
“This means that our test could easily be used directly in a doctor’s office, obviating having to send the samples out to a laboratory that needs at least a couple of hours, if not days, to get test results,” added Sia whose lab is focused on using microfluidics to build low-cost, integrated devices for performing sophisticated medical tests, together with developing new treatment modalities based on cell therapy and implantable devices.
Sia’s group worked in collaboration with Maria Gomes-Solecki from Immuno Technologies, which found a combination of three proteins that identified antibodies specific to the B. burgdorferi bacterium in the serum, and OPKO Health, which provided microfluidic cassettes. Their findings were published today in the journal of ‘Clinical Microbiology’.
The researchers evaluated 142 samples, including patients with early Lyme disease, healthy individuals from areas where Lyme disease is endemic, and those with Lyme arthritis.