Bench testing for Lyme Disease

Lyme disease manifests with two main stages: the earlier is characterized by general symptoms such as headache and fever, plus a typical “bull’s-eye” shaped skin rush (Erythema migrans); the later shows a worsening of those general symptoms from Early Lyme and reaches deeper organs such heart, brain and joints. Although a few weeks of antibiotics are in most cases enough to recover from Early Lyme, if the illness degenerates into its later stage, it may lead to permanent damage to nervous and musculoskeletal systems. Therefore, it results urgent to develop a high-performance diagnostic tool for recognizing Lyme disease even in its early stage, exactly where present golden standards in diagnostics struggle still today, showing a sensitivity of 48% (Early Lyme). In the following work, it was studied how to implement a microfluidics-based version of indirect ELISA testing for Lyme disease and its performances with particular care for diagnosing Early Lyme.