This will help many doctors and researchers understand the issues with testing for only a few strains of Lyme!
"Biodiversity of Borrelia burgdorferi Strains in Tissues of Lyme Disease Patients"
www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022926#pone-0022926-g001 Abstract
Plant and animal biodiversity are essential to ecosystem
health and can provide benefits to humans ranging from
aesthetics to maintaining air quality. Although the
importance of biodiversity to ecology and conservation
biology is obvious, such measures have not been applied to
strains of an invasive bacterium found in human tissues
during infection. In this study, we compared the strain
biodiversity of Borrelia burgdorferi found in tick
populations with that found in skin, blood, synovial fluid
or cerebrospinal fluid of Lyme disease patients.
The biodiversity of B. burgdorferi strains is significantly
greater in tick populations than in the skin of patients
with erythema migrans. In turn, strains from skin are
significantly more diverse than strains at any of the
disseminated sites. The cerebrospinal fluid of patients with
neurologic Lyme disease harbored the least pathogen
biodiversity. These results suggest that human tissues act
as niches that can allow entry to or maintain only a subset
of the total pathogen population. These data help to explain
prior clinical observations on the natural history of B.
burgdorferi infection and raise several questions that may
help to direct future research to better understand the
pathogenesis of this infection.