A protein found in human sweat may offer protection from Lyme disease, a bacterial infection spread by ticks, research suggests.
For a new study, published March in the journal Nature Communications, scientists scoured huge datasets of human genetic information and compared the genes of people with and without Lyme disease. The researchers uncovered three genes associated with a higher risk of infection, two of which were known to be associated with the disease. However, the third gene — which makes a type of protein found in the skin and sweat — had never been tied to it.
