Tick season is well underway in the Northeast, but this year, some New Jersey kids are heading into the woods with a new potential defense against Lyme disease.
Rutgers University is one of 50 clinical trial sites for a Lyme disease vaccine that’s being tested on children aged 5 to 17 in New Jersey and other parts of the country. Pfizer and the French company Valneva developed the vaccine, which involves three doses given over six months plus a booster a year later.
Children participating in the Rutgers branch of the study began receiving their first doses just a few weeks ago. Each site is enrolling between 50 and 100 children, for a total of 3,000 kids nationwide. About a quarter of the kids involved will get a placebo, while the rest will get the real thing.
For Taylor Naughton, who lives on five acres of land next to a game preserve in Allentown, a Lyme vaccine can’t come soon enough. She signed up her 6-year-old son Seamus when she saw an ad about it on Instagram. She said he has already had Lyme disease twice after playing in the woods near their house. Each time, she said, she found a tick on him, and he had symptoms including a bad headache and stiff neck.
“Both of these times we caught it right at the onset, so we were lucky that antibiotics cleared it up,” said Naughton, who has also had Lyme disease herself. She said Seamus received his first shot of the vaccine in April.
But she said she worries that antibiotics could be less effective if the bacteria that causes the infection, Borrelia burgdorferi, ever becomes resistant. Debate remains on whether this germ can develop drug tolerance in humans and if it contributes to chronic Lyme disease, as researchers continue to study the question.
The shot, known as VLA15, entered its third phase of clinical trials last August and has shown early signs that it can generate defenses against Lyme disease for children and adults with limited side effects, according to Pfizer. The phase 3 trial is scheduled to…
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