recommendation for most accurate lymes tests?

Hi teeners,

The ELISA is the basic test. If it comes out positive, then they run the Western blot which is a more refined test.

However, the test is looking for antibodies that you may not be producing because the disease suppresses the immune system.

Lyme Literate doctors diagnose Lyme disease clinically, evaluating your symptoms in detail. Also many LLMDs use the Igenex testing lab as they find it produces more accurate results

Please check out the "New to Lyme?... Start here" thread at the top of the forum. Compare your symptoms to the ones listed there.

A tick bite with accompanying symptoms is a pretty good indicator that Lyme should be suspected!

If your doctor is reluctant to do more testing, or if you want a true diagnosis, seek out a Lyme literate doctor. We can help you find one.

The Elisa is a waste. The only time I have ever seen it positive was with my son who had two bulls eyes. In my opinion, it is probably accurate in the first few weeks or months only. The western blot is not that much more accurate only because you have to have so many bands to be positive when in fact you can have lyme. The banding is the significant part. If you have a western blot, and you have to specifically request it, get a copy and post the results here or research them yourself. My husband was just found to have late stage lyme and not one band showed up on two separate western blots. However, upon sending his blood to Igenex in California, the nations leading lyme lab, he tested positive. Lyme is a very controversial disease. The testing is to me the most frustrating because many, like me, could have been treated early and probably successfully if the testing was more accurate OR if the medical profession was more informed and aware of the process. Please don't wait. This disease can change your life if left untreated. You can go online and request a kit from igenex and get your dr. to take the blood and send to them. It is very expensive but I submit to my insurance and they pay part. Believe me it is so worth it. Best to you.

Hi Kingfisher,

Welcome to the forum! Please read the permanent thread at the top of this forum entitled, "New to Lyme?...Start here" It has a great deal of useful information on Lyme and how to feel better.

You have not been on medication for very long, so you probably won't notice much difference for a while. It is also quite possible you will feel a bit worse before you are better. Don't stop treatment, if that is the case! It is a sign that the meds are working.

That was a good catch to find you have Lyme. There really is no need to be tested again once you have Lyme you will get no further information from it.

If you don't end up feeling better, you will need to test for co-infections, however. To do this, you had best go to a Lyme Literate Doctor. That way you will get thorough and effective treatment. You really should consult one anyway as most Primary Care Physicians will not feel empowered to treat Lyme until after all the symptoms have gone away, which is crucial to not have a relapse later.

Hope you get your energy back soon!

 

Teeners,

You had a tick bite--regardless of the presence of the bull's eye rash!  Not everyone gets a bull's eye rash.  My symptoms also came on 6 months after the bite, and they were very gradual.  Now that they've had 16 years to percolate due to lack of diagnosis, they've gotten pretty bad.  Lyme is most effectively treated early on.  You'll save a lot of money that way, too.  I've easily spent $60K on treatment in that time--probably more.

 

Thanks very much for the info.
I have checked with the doc's office and find that my ELISA score was 4.03--well over the threshold of 1.1. Moreover, they did a followup Reflex of Western Blot test, confirming the ELISA results--at least I believe that's the protocol.
In any event, I shall finish this 200 mg/day medication and see how I feel.
Meanwhile, I'll see if there's any docs in my region with the Lyme creds.

Interesting sidelight: several folks with this experience I've talked to have ALSO attributed their symptoms to "old age"!!! 8-)

I haven't determined if this lab is doing of label testing or not.


News
LymeDisease.org
16 FEB 2018
Diagnosing many tick-borne diseases with just one blood test?

Press release from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health:

A new blood test called the Tick-Borne Disease Serochip (TBD Serochip) promises to revolutionize the diagnosis of tick-borne disease by offering a single test to identify and distinguish between Borrelia burgdorferi, the pathogen responsible for Lyme disease, and seven other tick-borne pathogens.
Led by scientists at the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, the research team report details on the new test in the journal Nature: Scientific Reports.

The researchers — who also include scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Roche Sequencing Solutions, Farmingdale State College, and Stony Brook University — sought to improve on existing tests for tick-borne diseases (TBDs), which have limited diagnostic accuracy and cannot test for more than one infection simultaneously.

Currently, diagnosis of Lyme disease, the most common TBD, requires two separate tests. This cumbersome approach also relies on subjective criteria for the interpretation of results, and accurately identifies fewer than 40 percent of patients with early disease and results in false positives in 28 percent of the time.

The accuracy of the method used to diagnose TBDs Babesia, Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, and Rickettsia varies widely among testing laboratories. And for other tick-borne agents, specific blood tests are not yet available, or in the case of the potentially deadly Powassan virus or Heartland virus, are only performed in specialized laboratories.

“The number of Americans diagnosed with tick-borne disease is steadily increasing as tick populations have expanded geographically,” says Rafal Tokarz, PhD.

“Each year, approximately 3 million clinical specimens are tested for TBDs in the U.S. Nonetheless, the true incidence of TBDs is likely greatly underestimated, as patients with presumed TBDs are rarely tested for the full range of tick-borne agents, and only a fraction of positive cases are properly reported,” adds Nischay Mishra, PhD.

Co-lead authors Tokarz and Mishra are associate research scientists in the Center for Infection and Immunity.

The TBD Serochip can simultaneously test for the presence of antibodies in blood to more than 170,000 individual protein fragments. Version 1.0 can identify exposure to eight tick-borne pathogens present in the U.S., including Anaplasma phagocytophilum (agent of human granulocytic anaplasmosis), Babesia microti (babesiosis), Borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme disease), Borrelia miyamotoi, Ehrlichia chaffeensis (human monocytic ehrlichiosis), Rickettsia rickettsii (Rocky Mountain spotted fever), Heartland virus and Powassan virus.

The researchers also included Long Island tick rhabdovirus, a novel virus they recently discovered in Amblyomma americanum ticks. As new tick-borne infectious agents are discovered, the TBD-Serochip will be modified to target them — a process the researchers say can be done in less than four weeks.
The TBD Serochip is also able to identify whether an individual is infected with more than one tick-borne pathogen. Individual ticks are frequently infected with more than one agent; Ixodes scapularis ticks alone can transmit at least five human pathogens. Evidence of exposure to other tick-borne pathogens in patients with Lyme disease has been well documented. In the new paper, the researchers report finding antibodies to another agent in 26 percent of blood specimens from patients with TBD.
In addition to its utility as a diagnostic platform, the TBD Serochip also provides a powerful research tool for studies of TBDs. The technology can be employed to discriminate individual antibody responses in patients with TBD and thus examine the interplay of TBD agents on disease manifestation and progression. It can also be used to assess the impact of genetic diversity of tick-borne pathogens on the host immune response.

“Diagnosing tick-borne illness is a difficult journey for patients, delaying effecting treatment,” says senior author W. Ian Lipkin, MD, director of CII and John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “The TBD Serochip promises to make diagnosis far easier, offering a single, accurate test for eight different TBDs. Early detection of infection enables rapid and appropriate treatment.”

Note from editor: The press release does not state when this test will be available to the general public.