Lyme Disease Vaccination
What some of you may not be aware of is that their is a vaccine that has been made and tested, and found to be effective against Lyme disease.
The Lyme disease vaccine is called LYMErix and is made by TM SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals. It is available to residents of the USA aged 15 to 70 years.
Clinical trials have been fruitful and the side effects rather few, and I will describe those side effects in another post to come.
This post is to describe the results and recommendations made in relation to this Lyme disease vaccine, by a document appearing on the CDC web site (originally posted in 1999).
Firstly, the Lyme disease vaccine requires you to have three vaccinations with LYMErix:
With 2 vaccinations you have a 49% chance of being protected against the Lyme disease YOU HAVE ALREADY CAUGHT; with 3 vaccinations that climbs to 76% chance that the Lyme disease YOU HAVE ALREADY CAUGHT will be defeated.
Although no stats are obviously apparent, the value of the Lyme disease vaccine for non-infected persons is determined by the density of Lyme disease carrying ticks in the environment and the amount of contact the person is likely to have in the area where those ticks are. The medical opinion of that document is one of cost analysis to a large degree, but I would argue that the human suffering of those who do become infected, warrants a wider group of people having access to the vaccine than would otherwise be recommended medically speaking.
Specifically these learned people argue that the vaccine is NOT recommended for those in low risk groups, whereas this should be for the person to decide. As Katelyn, the previous author of LymeAdvocate.com found, the family dog was considered to have negligible risk of catching Lyme disease, because it was a house dog, not an outdoors dog. Well, the dog went outside, got bitten by a lyme carrying tick, and later died. Although I am not talking about pets on this page as such, the juxtaposition of pet dog and human is very worthwhile mentioning and pointing out, for the same goes for people in low risk groups – they are still open to becoming infected by Lyme disease infected ticks.
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