Wm. Zhong et al., DETECTION AND PRELIMINARY CHARACTERIZATION OF CIRCULATING IMMUNE-COMPLEXES IN PATIENTS WITH LYME-DISEASE, Medical microbiology and immunology, 186(2-3), 1997, pp. 153-158
To investigate whether circulating immune complexes can be used as a d
isease marker for assessment of the activity of Lyme disease and for m
onitoring patients' response to treatment, we tested 104 sera from pat
ients with different stages of Lyme disease using the C1q enzyme-linke
d immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and a modified Raji cell test. Among 62
sera of patients with clinically active disease 27 sera (43.5%) reacte
d positively in the C1q-ELISA and 21 sera (33.9%) positively in the Ra
ji cell test. In contrast, serum circulating immune complexes were fou
nd in less than 10% of 42 sera after antibiotic treatment. Similar res
ults were obtained by both tests in 35 cerebrospinal fluid samples fro
m patients with neuroborreliosis. Most importantly, dot blot analysis
revealed the presence of both Borrelia burgdorferi-specific antigen(s)
and host-derived components in the isolated immune complexes from ser
um samples of patients with active Lyme disease. These results indicat
e that detection of circulating immune complexes may be an useful para
meter for judging the activity of Lyme disease. Moreover, preliminary
characterization of spirochete-specific immune complexes implies new p
athophysiological aspects of Lyme disease.