Actually, live blood microscopy is very informative, and the spirochetes are definitely seen in the blood. They really like both the red blood cells, and the white blood cells. I have been doing my own blood microscopy for over a year now and can tell you these things by first-hand experience.
marys, it would be easier to discern what that is with a video clip than with a pic. Besides a string of pearls spirochete, another possibility would be strep. But, it's not easy discerning what some of these type of objects are, and yours doesn't quite look like strep either. Here is a great phase contrast video of live blood showing rod (probably strep) bacteria:
/www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgLbrXTFOtgWhen you see a travelling, undulating, string object with bulbous tips on both ends, it's more than likely a spirochete. But, I see other morphologies besides typical spirochetes in the blood. That is the experience of others who are doing this, too. We also see round bodies and granules. All are borrelia. I'm reading Lida Mattman's book on Cell Wall Deficient Forms and the main infectious morphology of borrelia species in general is not the spirochetal form. It's the granules. But, without fluorescent DNA typing, it's impossible to discern pathogenic granules from things like lysosomes (cyto-toxic granules from WBCs). But, spirochetal forms are pretty unmistakable.
"thatdudefromkansas" is culturing spirochetes from his blood in BSK-H medium. This is what he is seeing, and it's the same thing the rest of us are seeing in our uncultured blood:
/youtu.be/aFa6S8fB2TkHere is a great thread on blood microscopy over on Lymenet:
flash.lymenet.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/1/120458Actually, the CDC endorses the use of dark field microscopy for the diagnosis of borrelia:
www.cdc.gov/relapsing-fever/clinicians/index.html"....best visualized by dark field microscopy,..."Post Edited (TOOTY) : 4/3/2016 1:20:48 PM (GMT-6)