Your experience with Dark Field Microscopy

Those of you who have had Dark Field Microscopy performed, can you tell me your experience with this?

I was interested in having this performed because I would like to pinpoint exactly what bugs I have floating around in my system so that I can treat them specifically.

Is there some place around Massachusetts I can have this performed? Or maybe a lab my doctor could send blood work to?

I had it done at Fry Labs

Very helpful but expensive ( $500ish ) and you need a DR that really knows what they are looking at.

It wasn't hard to see my Bart stuck in the biofilm even though I never test positive. Weird right?

I have done two DFM tests and i am from E Europe. too.

The test can be used as a guidance, it cannot be used as diagnostic. This is because although some experienced drs can distinguish between different species of Borrelia, that is not accurate. They can see it's a spirochete, it moves and behaves like one, but as to exactly identify the species... No. Same as for Bartonella, they usually say "bartonella-like organism identified", but as to distinguish between Henselae and Quintana ... no.

The steps are these
- 1. do a DFM if the DFM is positive, then
- 2. do a regular blood test but targeted towards the organisms identified in DFM. If they saw Bartonella, do a immunofluorescence of Quintana and Henselae and see which is positive. If none are you still have Bart, unknown species (they are over 30 species and they can test only for 2).
- 3. now that you know you have Borrelia, means probably a tick has bitten you, do regular blood tests to find other coinfections that probably were tranmitted by same tick- Erlichia, Mycoplasma, etc...
- 4. start treatment

DFM is really useful if you have no idea what disease you have, is it MS, ALS, AD, some other autoimmune disease? The fact that you find spirochetes running in your blood is the smoking gun. So it can save you a lot of $$ on all other sorts of tests, neurological, useless MRIs , etc... It guides the doctors towards the right diagnostic, but DFM alone cannot be used as diagnostic tool.

Post Edited (mpostelnicu) : 12/2/2015 2:30:02 AM (GMT-7)

I bought a dark field microscope to determine what I had. I had no formal training other than taking a medical microbiology class in college. I saw an increased fungal issue, eventually found protozoans after many, many hours of looking, and did not find biofilms. I saw things in my sister's blood that remain unknown.

gfields said...
Can you identify Babesia with DFM?

With the correct stain, it won't take as long. I didn't use a stain and it took many hours to see the merozoite stage in my smears. How long it takes would depend on how badly you were infected and how many were in your system.

Hello Hornet, I am not from Hungary but from your neighbour country România. To tell you the truth I have my DFM done at a very knowledgeable vet . He also had a collaboration with Dr. Bozsik în Hungary but is not doing Dual Dur. What mpostelnicu told you is perfectly True : I did a DFM at one of the private labs in Bucharest and they stated in brakets :please confirm via serology-bartonella, and it was confirmed by immunofluorescence. My last DFM showed something very interesting :Dohle bodies în the citoplasma wich is why I am very interested now în the citokine storm and MCAD. Also as I read you Hornet have very intense headaches, and they can be attributed to bartonella or babesia, even if it is not found on a DFM.

What kind of stain is used to see Babesia? I might make one of these dark scope miscroscopes out of my current microscrope.

The usual stain for plasmodium parasites (Babesia & Malaria) is Wright-Giemsa stain. All you need is a regular brightfield microscope to view a blood smear stained with that.

But if you want to try to see plasmodium parasites in live blood it is going to be easier to see them with darkfield or with phase contrast. It is cheaper and easier to reconfigure a microscope for darkfield. All you need to add is a darkfield condenser. To outfit your scope with phase contrast you need to get a phase contrast condenser AND phase contrast objective lens. So, darkfield is easier.

Thx finisului!

For me bartonella, babesia was found along with two strains of borrelia under the DFM. I start to think that my neurological issues are rather due to bartonella than due to borrelia as the ceftriaxone did not help much with the headaches but the doxy now does (and I have reaction to houttuynia with doxy too).

How is the treatment in Romania? Are there any good, knowledgeable lyme doctors out there?

Fry labs said this:

Our laboratory does not perform Dark Field Microscopy. The closest assay is our wet mount Advanced Stain that uses fluorescent DNA staining.

We have an extensive listing of Lyme and co-infection tests. Please review our Services Handbook and Test Requisition for descriptions and combinations of tests we currently offer.

Services Handbook:
http://frylabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/services_handbook_9_2015.pdf

Test Requisition:
http://frylabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/requisition_9_2015.pdf

Thanks Jackie Moon. I sent you an email.

Revisiting the original youtube video that mentioned Fry Labs and DFM, he said that his gf was diagnosised through Fry Labs with protoza FM 1953:
https://katinamakris.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/interesting-news/

I'm considering asking Fry Labs to perform a full panel blood test. Not sure how much that would cost. Probably at least 1k.

Yes, I came back positive on the regular test and the Igenex test for Lyme, but I didn't have any co-infections come back positive. I've been on abx for 3 months now, with no signs of improvement. I'm on doxy, azithromycin, rimanfrin, an enzyme bio-buster and nystatin. I'm starting to wonder if I have babesia or protoza. I think the stain might help identify this. Thanks Jackie M!