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Adaptive Immune Response Investigation in Lyme Borreliosis.
Adaptive Immune Response Investigation in Lyme Borreliosis.
To diagnose Lyme borreliosis, it is recommended to utilize an enzyme-linked immunosorbent test (ELISA) to screen for serum antibodies specific to Lyme. Any tests with positive or equivocal ELISA results should be confirmed by immunoblot. This method, which measures humoral immunity in human fluids like serum, has yielded robust and reproducible results for decades. Similar assays have been validated for monitoring B cell immunity.
These immunological tests, detecting antibodies to Borrelia burgdorferi, are routinely employed in borreliosis diagnosis. However, due to the variety of Borrelia species and their differing geographic distributions, standards, and recommendations may vary across regions worldwide.
In contrast to humoral immunity, understanding of T cell reaction or cellular immunity to Borrelia infection has been less clear. Over time, a novel T cell-based assay (EliSpot) has been developed and validated for sensitive detection of antigen-specific T cell responses to B. burgdorferi. This assay helps bridge the gap between detecting humoral and cellular immunity in Lyme disease.
Moreover, assessing cellular immunity could be a valuable laboratory diagnostic test for Lyme disease, particularly in seronegative patients. Serodiagnostic methods frequently yield false positive and negative results, making a T cell-based diagnostic test (cellular assay) useful in confirming Lyme diagnosis. Many clinical laboratories consider the cellular assay superior to Western Blot in terms of sensitivity for detecting underlying Borrelia infection.
Research indicates a dissociation between the magnitude of humoral and T cell-mediated cellular immune responses in Borrelia infection. The EliSpot Lyme assay may thus help identify Borrelia-infected individuals when serology-based diagnostics fall short. In this chapter, pairing humoral and cellular immunity is utilized to evaluate adaptive responses in patients.
Pruteanu, M., Schwarzbach, A., Berger, M. (2024). Adaptive Immune Response Investigation in Lyme Borreliosis. In: Gilbert, L. (eds) Borrelia burgdorferi. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2742. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3561-2_6
Full protocol: Paper link
