ROLE OF VlsE/C6 ANTIGEN AS A MARKER FOR EARLY LYME BORRELIOSIS DIAGNOSIS AND MONITORING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ITS TREATMENT

Diagnosing Lyme borreliosis, despite years of standardization, continues to encounter

difficulties. They result primarily from the lack of a good marker of active infection and one

helpful in assessing the effectiveness of the treatment. So far, a certain diagnosis of Lyme

borreliosis can be made only in a patient with erythema migrans (EM). Unfortunately, this

symptom occurs only in some patients. According to the recommendations of the Polish

Society of Epidemiologists and Doctors of Infectious Diseases, the effectiveness of treatment

is determined by the disappearance of clinical symptoms. For this reason, for years, we have

been looking for highly sensitive and diagnostically specific laboratory markers. These

would allow for rapid identification of fresh infections with Borrelia spirochetes as well

as simple monitoring of treatment efficacy. According to many of the recently published

publications, the solution to the second of the presented problems may be the measurement

of IgG antibodies to the surface antigen of Borrelia burgdorferi s.l. VlsE / C6.