Photo: Getty Images North America
AMHERST, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst-based New England Center of Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases (NEWVEC) offers a promising lead in the fight against Lyme disease.
Stephen Rich, UMass Amherst professor of microbiology and executive director of NEWVEC, and his team recently published a study in the journal Vector-borne and Zoonotic Diseases demonstrating that the blood of the white-tailed deer kills the corkscrew-shaped bacterium that causes Lyme disease.
Lyme disease is a potentially debilitating illness spread to humans through the bites of infected ticks. Symptoms include rash, fever, extreme fatigue, joint stiffness, muscle aches and pains, and swollen lymph nodes.
"Deer are vitally important to the survival of deer ticks, but they are not involved with transmitting the Lyme bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi," Rich explained. "We’ve known for some time that ticks taken from white-tailed deer are not infected, and we speculated that something about the deer prevented those ticks from becoming infected. But until publication of our paper, no one had done the experiment to show that deer blood – specifically the serum component of white-tailed deer blood – kills Lyme."
To conduct the experiment, the researchers obtained blood serum from a semi-captive white-tailed deer herd at Auburn University in Alabama. The deer were believed to have no exposure to ticks and the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
The researchers then grew the Lyme disease germ in test tubes and added the deer serum, which according to Rich killed the bacteria.
"Whatever it is in the deer that’s killing the germ is part of the innate immune system, a part of the immune system that precedes antibodies," Rich said.
The next step is determining the precise mechanisms in deer blood that kill the bacteria.
"We’d like to determine if it’s something we can induce in humans,” said Rich. "Or maybe we could use this somehow to our advantage to reduce the incidence of Lyme disease in the wild."
Follow WBZ NewsRadio: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | iHeartmedia App