Lyme Disease and New Molecular Biological Detection Methods

Molecular biology plays an important role in understanding the structures, functions and internal controls within each cell. All this can be used to diagnose the diseases, effectively target new medicines and better understand cellular physiology. The bacteria that cause Lyme disease are difficult to observe directly in body tissues and too time-consuming to grow in the laboratory. Lyme disease can affect several body systems and produce a broad range of symptoms. Not everybody with Lyme disease has all the symptoms and many of the symptoms are not specific but may occur with other diseases. Common laboratory diagnostic methods have many false positive results in contaminated areas. These problems have made scientists think of finding accurate and fast methods to diagnose. The accuracy and precision of molecular biological methods have made an important field of research to identify the pathogen of this disease. Borrelia Burgdorferi is a species of the Spirochaeta order and Borrelia genus. This type of Gram-negative bacteria is the most important cause of Lyme disease. Five of these species, Borrelia afzeli, Borrelia garinii, Borrelia bavariansis, Borrelia bergdorferi senses strict, and Borrelia spirmani, have been described as causative agents of Lyme disease in humans. There are 36 known Borrelia species. In the Borrelia family, three species cause Lyme disease or borreliosis, the most important cause in USA is Borrelia Burgdorferi and the main cause in Europe are Borrelia afzelii and Borrelia garinii. Accurate molecular tests are designed for specific detection and isolation of strains. This study was conducted by reviewing 131 related articles from Scopus, ISI and PubMed databases. Finally, methods for designing accurate molecular tests to identify disease agents were reported.