New Microarray Platform Aims to Improve Tick-Borne Disease Diagnosis
Jason Barker, ND, explains how standard testing can miss coinfections and how Vibrant’s microarray improves sensitivity and efficiency in a single test.
A newly developed multiplex protein microarray platform promises to improve the diagnosis of tick-borne diseases by allowing the detection of multiple pathogens in a single test. Published in Scientific Reports in January 2025, the study highlights the effectiveness of this tool in enhancing both sensitivity and specificity for diagnosing tick-borne and other infectious diseases.
Multiplex protein microarray
Image credits: Jason Barker, ND
Tick-borne infections, including Lyme disease, are the most common vector-borne diseases in the United States and Europe. Although, current diagnostic methods often fail to detect multiple pathogens at once and are prone to misdiagnosis due to overlapping symptoms and varying tick populations.
The new multiplex protein microarray, developed by Vibrant Wellness, addresses these limitations by enabling clinicians to test for multiple pathogens in one run. The platform can detect antibodies against 400 different antigens, including those for Borrelia burgdorferi, the spirochete responsible for Lyme disease, as well as a variety of other microbes.
In part 1 of our interview with Jason Barker, ND, clinical lab educator at Vibrant Wellness, he discussed the limitations of current diagnostic methods and how Vibrant’s technology offers improvements. “Kind of the standard testing today we refer to as the standard two-tier testing. If you go to a big, one of the main commercial labs, they'll run what's called an ELISA, and they're looking for one very specific protein to the bacteria that spreads Lyme disease, which is Borrelia burgdorferi. And then if that test is what you'd call equivocal kind of looks positive and/or positive, then they'll run something called a Western Blot, or an immunoblot, and that methodology attempts to separate several different proteins that that bacteria can carry. So we're looking for antibody binding to these antigens or the proteins from the bug.”
He also pointed out the complexities of tick-borne infections, “Lyme disease proper is caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, and sometimes Borrelia mayonii, a cousin or relative of that burgdorferi. But the problem is, it's rare that if a person is bitten by a tick that they're going to be infected by just Borrelia burgdorferi. They may have several other versions or different species of Borrelia.”
Barker elaborated further on how Vibrant’s microarray improves diagnostic capabilities, “With Vibrant’s technology, we can actually run 100 different antigens on one single little pillar. We can look at all the different parts of the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria. We can look at the co-species. We can look at the co-infections. We also look at opportunistic infections like Epstein-Barr and cytomegalovirus and toxoplasmosis because all this other stuff that people may very well be infected with as well.”
Barker concluded by highlighting the advantages of Vibrant’s approach: “It’s just a more efficient test. It’s more cost-effective, and it’s a lot more sensitive than that standard two-tier technology.”
Stay tuned for more details and the full interview with Barker in the next few video installments coming soon, where he will discuss the broader impact of Vibrant’s technology on tick-borne disease diagnosis.
