Why a Lyme Vaccine Won’t Be the Whole Answer
For many, the idea of a Lyme vaccine feels long overdue. After decades of underfunding, misdiagnosis, and medical gaslighting, the possibility of a future preventative measure might sound like the breakthrough patients and families have been waiting for. It’s easy to understand why talks about a vaccine spark hope. The promise of protection, of finally stopping the disease before it starts, is compelling—especially for those who’ve seen firsthand how devastating Lyme can be.
But before we celebrate, it’s important to take a step back and ask deeper questions. What exactly will this vaccine protect against? What are its limitations? And what unintended consequences could it have for patients who are already being overlooked by a fragmented, under-educated medical system?
At Lyme Advise, we believe in science. We also believe in nuance. Because for the Lyme community—where misdiagnosis is common, co-infections are rarely tested for, and healing is often delayed by years—the arrival of a vaccine is not just a milestone. It’s a moment that deserves careful examination. Not every solution is the full solution, and not every promise delivers protection for all.
So let’s take a closer look at what’s missing from the Lyme vaccine conversation—and why it matters for your health, your future, and our community as a whole.
1. The Upcoming Lyme Vaccine: What We Know So Far
After decades of rising Lyme disease cases and limited public health intervention, a new human Lyme vaccine is finally in development. Known as VLA15, the vaccine is currently undergoing Phase 3 clinical trials, with pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Valneva leading the initiative.
The Phase 3 study, titled the VALOR trial, began in 2022 and has completed participant recruitment. The trial is designed to evaluate the vaccine’s safety, immunogenicity (how well it triggers an immune response), and its overall effectiveness in both adults and children. Study results are expected by the end of 2025, with plans to file for FDA and EMA approval in 2026.
VLA15 is being developed to protect against the six most common serotypes of Borrelia burgdorferi—the primary bacteria known to cause Lyme disease in North America and Europe. According to Pfizer and Valneva, the goal is to offer broad coverage across regional variations of Borrelia, making it a potentially useful tool in reducing the incidence of Lyme disease from tick bites.
At this stage, the vaccine has not been approved or made available to the public, but regulatory filings are underway and public messaging around its future availability is ramping up.
While this is a promising development, it’s only one piece of a much larger puzzle—and like any new intervention, it comes with important limitations and unanswered questions.
2. The Vaccine Only Covers One Pathogen—And That’s a Problem
The upcoming Lyme vaccine in development is designed to target Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria most commonly linked to Lyme disease in North America. On the surface, this might sound like the solution we’ve all been waiting for—finally, a way to stop Lyme before it starts.
But here's the critical issue: Borrelia is just one of many pathogens carried by ticks.
A single bite can transmit multiple infections at once, and many of them—like Babesia, Bartonella, Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, Rickettsia, and even viruses and parasites—are just as debilitating as Lyme, if not more so in certain patients. These co-infections can cause fevers, night sweats, neurological symptoms, cardiac issues, joint pain, psychiatric complications, and persistent fatigue. And none of them will be prevented by a Lyme vaccine.
Which means you could be fully vaccinated… and still end up sick from a tick bite.
And that’s not the only concern.
In a medical system where Lyme disease is already under-recognized, a vaccine could easily create a false sense of security—not just for patients, but for doctors. We’ve already heard from practitioners and patient advocates who are worried this will lead to more missed diagnoses, not fewer.
It’s easy to imagine a scenario where someone walks into their doctor’s office with classic symptoms of Lyme or a co-infection, only to be told:
“You’re vaccinated—you can’t have Lyme.”
And just like that, the patient gets dismissed. Testing isn’t ordered. Treatment is delayed. And once again, the burden of proof falls on the person who’s already sick and exhausted.
We’ve seen this happen before.
We can’t afford to let it happen again.
3. A Vaccine Could Lead to Dropped Outdoor Protections
One of the greatest risks that comes with a vaccine rollout—especially in a community as complex as Lyme disease—is the false sense of security it may create.
When people believe they are fully protected, their behavior often changes. They may become less diligent about using tick repellents, wearing protective clothing, doing full-body tick checks, or avoiding high-risk environments like dense brush and tall grasses. These are critical habits that have been drilled into public health messaging for decades.
But even with a Lyme vaccine, the risk from ticks doesn’t disappear.
Ticks are still active globally. They still carry co-infections like Babesia, Bartonella, Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, and others—none of which the current vaccine protects against. And scientists continue to discover new tick-borne pathogens that could pose risks we don’t even fully understand yet.
Environmental prevention—things like using permethrin-treated clothing, applying tick repellents, performing frequent tick checks, and minimizing exposure during peak tick seasons—will still be just as important after the vaccine becomes available as they are today.
If public education shifts toward “you're protected now, don’t worry,” there’s a real risk that years of hard-won awareness could be undone. Instead of reducing Lyme and other tick-borne illnesses, we could see them persist—or even rise—among those who believe a vaccine has made outdoor precautions unnecessary.
A vaccine should be seen as one tool in a larger prevention strategy—not a replacement for common-sense protections that save lives and prevent long-term suffering.
4. We’ve Seen This Happen Before: Lessons from LYMErix
This isn’t the first time a Lyme vaccine has been introduced to the public.
In the late 1990s, a vaccine called LYMErix was developed and approved to protect against Lyme disease. It was widely hailed as a scientific breakthrough—one that many hoped would curb the growing epidemic of tick-borne infections. Like VLA15 today, LYMErix was designed to prevent disease caused by Borrelia burgdorferi—but it had significant limitations and consequences that were not fully understood at the time.
Within just a few years, cracks in the promise of protection began to show.
Reports of adverse reactions—including arthritis, neurological symptoms, and autoimmune complications—began surfacing among vaccinated patients. Although the CDC and vaccine manufacturers maintained that the shot was safe, many patients felt their concerns were dismissed or minimized. Lawsuits were filed. Public trust eroded. And uptake dropped sharply.
By 2002, LYMErix was voluntarily withdrawn from the market, not because it was officially banned, but because public confidence collapsed and legal challenges mounted.
But perhaps the most painful legacy for many patients wasn’t just the side effects. It was what happened after vaccination:
Patients who developed Lyme-like symptoms were told it was "impossible" because they had been vaccinated.
Doctors often refused to test vaccinated individuals for Lyme disease, assuming they were fully protected.
Those who continued to experience pain, fatigue, neurological issues, or systemic inflammation were labeled as having psychosomatic or unrelated conditions.
The vaccine didn’t prevent all cases of Lyme disease.
But it created an environment where those who did get sick struggled even harder to be believed.
This is not just ancient history.
It’s a reminder that medical tools—even well-intentioned ones—can cause real harm when they are treated as absolute solutions instead of partial protections.
Today, with VLA15 on the horizon, we face many of the same risks:
Overconfidence in a single-pathogen vaccine
Dismissal of patients who continue to suffer
Loss of vigilance in prevention, testing, and early treatment
History has already shown us what happens when a vaccine is seen as a cure-all.
We owe it to every patient—past, present, and future—not to repeat the same mistakes.
5. What We Actually Need: Beyond a Single Vaccine
At Lyme Advise, we are not anti-vaccine.
We are pro-reality.
And the reality is: a Lyme vaccine could be a helpful tool—but it will never be the entire solution.
Reducing the burden of Lyme and tick-borne diseases requires a much bigger shift—one that goes beyond a single pharmaceutical intervention.
Here’s what true progress would actually look like:
→ Better Education on Co-Infections
Ticks don't just carry Borrelia. They carry dozens of pathogens, and many patients battling "Lyme" are also fighting Babesia, Bartonella, Anaplasma, and more. We need healthcare providers to understand and look for the full spectrum of tick-borne diseases—not just Lyme.
→ Doctors Trained to Recognize Complex, Chronic Cases
Lyme disease doesn’t always follow textbook symptoms. Co-infections, immune dysfunction, and persistent inflammation can create complex, multi-system illness. We need doctors who are trained to listen, to look deeper, and to treat the patient in front of them—not just the lab results.
→ Affordable and Accurate Testing
Testing for Lyme and co-infections is still notoriously unreliable. Many patients receive false negatives early in their illness, delaying treatment for months or years. We need better diagnostic tools—and we need them to be accessible to everyone, not just those who can pay out-of-pocket for specialty labs.
→ Continued Focus on Environmental and Lifestyle Protections
Ticks are not going away—and neither are the diseases they carry. Education around outdoor safety, tick checks, repellents, and landscaping practices needs to stay front and center, vaccine or not.
→ A Medical System That Listens to Patients
Too many patients have been dismissed because their symptoms didn’t match "classic Lyme" descriptions or because they didn’t respond quickly to antibiotics. We need a healthcare system that believes patients, investigates persistent symptoms, and recognizes that healing is not one-size-fits-all.
6. Is It Too Little, Too Late?
While a vaccine might help prevent future cases, it does little for the hundreds of thousands who are already living with Lyme disease and co-infections today.
Patients who have spent years navigating misdiagnosis, delayed treatment, persistent symptoms, and medical gaslighting often feel like an afterthought in public health conversations. And with the arrival of a vaccine, there's a real risk that attention—and funding—could shift even further away from those who are still fighting for proper care.
The truth is: chronic Lyme patients still face enormous gaps in diagnosis, treatment, insurance coverage, and medical validation. Many are forced to seek expensive out-of-pocket care, travel long distances to see Lyme-literate providers, or spend years trying to piece together their own healing protocols.
A vaccine may help future generations, but what about the patients who have already been left behind?
We can’t allow the narrative to become, "The problem is solved," when so many are still suffering.
Progress for the future should never come at the cost of compassion and care for those who are sick now.
7. What Happens If You Already Have Lyme Disease?
One of the biggest unanswered questions in the vaccine conversation is: what happens if someone already has Lyme disease—either active or dormant—and then receives the vaccine?
Right now, there is limited public information available on how the upcoming VLA15 vaccine would interact with individuals who already have Borrelia infections.
Could it exacerbate symptoms?
Could it trigger an immune response that makes symptoms worse?
Could it cause dormant infections to reactivate?
We simply don’t know.
For those who have had Lyme disease in the past—or for those with undiagnosed, simmering infections—this uncertainty is a serious concern. Without clear, transparent research on vaccine safety for previously exposed individuals, patients could be put at unnecessary risk.
Any future vaccine rollout must address this head-on, not sweep it under the rug. Patients deserve to know how the vaccine could impact their unique health situations—not just a generic promise of protection.
8. Why a Vaccine—and Not a Better Testing, Diagnoses, and Treatment?
It’s also worth asking a hard question: why are we seeing millions invested into a vaccine before we have reliable testing, diagnoses and valuable treatments for acute and chronic, persistent Lyme disease?
Patients who have suffered for years—sometimes decades—are still waiting for:
→ Effective, validated therapies for persistent Borrelia infections
→ Broader treatment options for co-infections
→ Research funding dedicated to complex, chronic cases
→ Doctors who understand how to treat long-haul symptoms without dismissal
Instead, pharmaceutical efforts have focused on prevention for the healthy, not healing for the sick.
Of course, preventing Lyme disease is important. But for a medical system that has so far failed to fully recognize or support chronic Lyme patients, the priorities feel deeply skewed.
If we truly want to address the Lyme crisis, we need both: prevention tools and robust, compassionate treatment options for those already battling this illness.
Because healing should never be an afterthought.
Bottom Line: What You Deserve to Know
A Lyme vaccine might reduce risk.
It might prevent some cases of Borrelia burgdorferi infection.
And that’s a step forward.
But it won't eliminate the threat of tick-borne disease.
It won't prevent co-infections.
It won't replace the need for vigilance, for prevention, or for doctors who know how to recognize the full complexity of Lyme and related illnesses.
The vaccine should be seen for what it is: one tool—not a complete solution.
If a Lyme vaccine becomes available in the next year or two, here’s what we’ll continue saying loud and clear:
Stay protected. Tick checks, repellents, and outdoor precautions still matter.
Stay informed. Understand what the vaccine can—and can't—do.
Stay empowered. If you experience symptoms, advocate for yourself. Push for testing. Push for answers. Push for care.
And above all:
Don’t let anyone dismiss your symptoms because of a vaccine.
Don’t let anyone force you to take a vaccine you’re not comfortable taking.
Your story, your experience, and your health still deserve to be taken seriously.
Because your life is worth more than a one-pathogen promise. And your healing deserves a system that sees all of you—not just the parts that fit neatly into a vaccine brochure.