Genetic blueprint of bacteria causing Lyme disease unraveled
Thursday, October 14, 2010 - 09:30
in Health & Medicine
Benjamin Luft, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Stony Brook University Medical Center, and a team of medical researchers have determined the genetic blueprint of 13 strains of the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. The finding is crucial to advancing research on Lyme disease, the most frequent tick-borne infection in North America and Europe, and may lead to better diagnostics and a vaccine. Dr. Luft presented the research results at an October 11 meeting in Washington, D.C., at the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences. The study is reported in the early online edition of the Journal of Bacteriology.