Three years after the debut of the only vaccine for Lyme disease, GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. said yesterday it would halt the manufacturing of the controversial medicine because of low demand.

Glaxo executives defended the drug's safety, however, despite concerns by some doctors and patients that the vaccine, called Lymerix, may cause arthritis and symptoms similar to Lyme disease itself.

The world's second-largest drug company sent letters Monday to 4,600 physicians and to drug wholesalers and distributors that it would stop making the vaccine because of lack of demand and poor sales.

"The demand for Lymerix is simply not there," spokeswoman Ramona Dubose said. Lymerix had sales of $40 million in 1999, the most recent year for which figures are available. "Hundreds of thousands were vaccinated," she said.

Glaxo expected 10,000 people to get vaccinated this year. "That's just not enough to sustain the manufacture and marketing of the vaccine," Dubose said.

Since the drug was approved in December 1998, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has received reports of serious side effects from doctors and researchers who asked the government to withdraw the vaccine.

About 350 people who believe the vaccine made them ill are suing Glaxo for monetary damages, said Stephen A. Sheller, a Philadelphia lawyer handling the suits filed in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The class-action lawsuits were seeking to require Glaxo to warn doctors and patients that the vaccine posed possible risks for those who are genetically predisposed to autoimmune arthritis or who have been previously infected with Lyme bacteria.

Andrea Gaito, a New Jersey rheumatologist and president of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, said the Lyme vaccine "seems to trigger diseases in certain patients that carry genes for those diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis. In my practice, I've seen about 60 people with side effects. Most side affects are arthritis."

Gaito said the vaccine also seemed to cause a relapse in patients who previously had Lyme disease and were inoculated to prevent reoccurrence.

However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reviewed 905 cases of possible "adverse" reactions reported to the government between December 1998 and July 2000 and found no proof the medicine caused arthritis or other side effects.

Ned Hayes, Lyme disease epidemiologist at the CDC, said the CDC found 22 cases of "hypersensitivity" or allergic reaction out of 1.4 million vaccine doses administered. "We can't prove they were due to the vaccine," Hayes said.

Lymerix was manufactured originally by SmithKline Beecham P.L.C., which is now part of Glaxo and employs more than 5,000 in the Philadelphia area.

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Linda Loyd's e-mail address is lloyd@phillynews.com.