Asymptomatic lyme?

I can just tell you what happened with 3 kids and husband - treated with multiple abx at same time and herbs with no reaction whatsoever. Treatment was for 6 weeks total (if i remember right). Everyone is probably different, but for us they must not have had any die-off to create a herx. Which leads me to believe it's dormant or taken care of by immune system. Is it just a matter of time before symptoms appear? Or, could more treatment totally cure it? Wish so badly I had those answers.

Not everyone herxes, but that's not the only reason for no response to treatment.

K07, my comments were NOT directed at you - I seem to be having issues with my wording today, so please forgive me. I was speaking in more general terms about "people". (or maybe I'm just being paranoid now? LOL)

Your family members were treated for 6 weeks, that should have (I would think) taken care of the infections, even if they were at low levels or they just had bodies that detox well enough to not herx. I was directing my comments more to those that don't do any treatments because they don't have strong symptoms. We've had a number of members come to us under those circumstances. Positive test, but not strong enough symptoms for them to think they have any real risks, so they don't treat.

Hi Traveler,

thanks for the reply. I asked my GP about possiblility of lyme disease (since I have had traces in my vision for the last 12 months, without any diagnosed cause) and the doctor told me that it is not Lyme at all! she said in lyme disease you will feel really really sick and not only in the the vision :/


Regards
Nana

Traveler said...

Nana1988 said...
Hei Neurogurl,

In 2006 you posted about an issue "Palinopsia", after 11 years can you please share your experience with me ? Was that finally diagnosed to be Palinopsia/Eye related issue? Or it was linked to other disease? Please share your experience with me! I have had trails in my vision for 9 months now! I can see the trails everytime there is a motion in a dim light. Is it really Palinopsia? or ? I have done MRI of brain which came normal, and I have been at 4 different eye doctors with no proper answer, just the last eye doctor said it can be due to irregular cornea of my eyes. However according to my search on internet irregular cornea should not cause after immages! Please help.
I just found you in this forum that is why I am asking this question here, however Palinopsia might not be relevant to this forum.

Regards
Nana1988

Hi Nana1988,
Welcome to the Lyme forum! I realize that this is not likely the forum you normally post in, but I did want to comment on something in your post.

" I can see the trails everytime there is a motion in a dim light."
These are known as 'tracers' here in the Lyme forum. We get them a lot, as well as seeing spots (sometimes they have color to them and sometimes they don't) as well as other visual things.

Obviously, without talking to you more and finding out what other symptoms you may have, I'm not saying you have Lyme - only that we know that symptom here.

As CD pointed out Dr. Bill Rawls does a pretty good job of explaining how we become infected with various things (not just lyme) and for the most part these things become part of our Microbiome.

Before I became ill I was perfectly healthy. Igenex testing revealed that I had 7 different infections and one of the first things I said to my LLMD was how do you go from being perfectly healthy to needing to treat 7 different infections. It didn't sit well with me or pass the common sense test. I had lived on the east coast my entire life and then moved to the west coast and became ill within 7 months. It was highly likely that I contracted those tick borne illnesses on the east coast and had been walking around with them for years.

Personally I believe the issues a lot of us face have nothing to do with the pathogens themselves but rather how our immune system establishes (or doesn't) a balance with the bugs. If we kept digging around in our blood we would likely find tons of things that are not naturally part of our microbiome, but in healthy individuals it does not cause illness. Why? That's the $1 million dollar question that no one has been able to answer. Could be that in susceptible individuals certain pathogens cause immune dysfunction via genetic mutations.

As other's mentioned the test could have provided a false positive (which I think is rare since you were IgM and IgG postivie) so it might be worth being tested again both standard lapcorp or quest Western blot and ELISA, and doing it through a specialty Lab such as Igenex. If you keep showing up positive then just keep it on your radar and do some reading/research on those suffering from chronic lyme. I think a lot of people became chronically ill following stressful events or certain situations that really weakened their immune system. Keeping your immune function up is definitely important. Best of luck and wish you well.

I'm of a different opinion on the testing and treatment. Having lived with these infections for over 45 years now, if a person tests positive and have any symptoms, don't wait on treatment, as chances are pretty darned good that it will only get worse and harder to treat. That's what happened to me - no one recognized what was going on (I was only 7 when it all started), and I didn't get an official diagnosis until I was 44 yrs old. I didn't/couldn't test positive until after I had 12 months of treatment, and then I came back with a fully CDC positive test for Lyme and RMSF (which I had at 7 yrs old).

And, these tests rely on the person having a healthy immune system reaction, which many don't (not to mention that the antibodies they test for only some have those strains of Lyme), as Lyme reduces the immune function. Until we get better testing, these tests simply cannot be relied on. That's why even the CDC admits that Lyme is a clinical diagnosis, with (hopefully) the tests backing up the clinical diagnosis.

Imagine if we told cancer patients that although their tests say they have it, we will just wait and watch? Or how about those with pneumonia? That wouldn't turn out well either. This is an active infection, doing damage to the body, why would we NOT wish to treat it?

Girlie said...

bmoberg337 said...


I don't agree with this. IgM and IgG positive = lyme disease. To be positive would mean lyme specific bands were showing + and nothing other than LD will produce those.

Yes I agree. It's highly likely that the OP is positive. The intention of my words was to convey an outside possibility of a false positive for whatever reason b/c the OP is asymptomatic. Every test is prone to error.

You had posted some really good questions in this thread and one I would add is:

For those testing CDC positive but are asymptomatic does this indicate a healthy immune response and are these individuals less likely to experience chronic symptoms down the road?

As traveler mentioned she didn't start testing positive until being treated for 12 months. I've heard of people sero converting following treatment, which begs the question of why they weren't testing positive in the first place. I personally have never tested positive for Lyme on run of the mill lyme labs or Igenex but have tested positive for just about every co-infection (via igenex, lab corp, and quest), and have a low CD57 and high C4a. I also lived on the east coast my whole life and lived next to Lyme, CT for 3 yrs, so it's probable that I had or still have Lyme yet I never show positive. I'm sure this bears relevance to my and others chronic symptoms. What is going on with the immune system?