Will Lyme ever test positive after taking abx

Hi all,
about 4 days ago I was in a wooded area and had a bunch of bug bites. Yesterday I woke up and a bite on my inner thigh presented with a bulls eye bruise, continued to spread throughout the day. I got a Lyme titer done yesterday (results came back today negative). I stared 21 days of doxy. I'm seeing a LLMD next week. My question is, will I ever definitively know I had Lyme? Will the further testing the LLMD performs continue to come up negative because I'll be on antibiotics? I don't hope to have LD by any means, but I'm curious as to how that works.

And, yes you can get a positive Lyme WB after being on abx.


Before I knew I had Lyme, I was on a round of abx for something unrelated and a few months later I tested positive for Lyme.

Thanks for the reply! I really don't know if it's a true bulls eye.. a few doctors have looked at it and some say yes, others say no lol.. so kinda in a weird spot!

it turns positive on abx for chronic people. what happens is us chronic people have a suppressed immune response due to ... lyme. so we no longer produce antibodies to fight it and thats what the tests measure (stupid, huh?).

you will ask how is that possible. i tell you how, we know about lyme since the '80s, but the fact that lyme is strong immune suppressive has become apparent only since 2015
journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1004976


when u take abx, there is so much spirochete debris flying around, that your immune system can no longer ignore it and mounts some sort of attack. this is why u get worse during treatment and ofc your antibodies will come back and your lyme test will turn positive ...

for acute lyme i dont know, i just think is best to treat immediately with abx and not wait. one month of doxy in the right dosage, given just after a bite will most probably cure you. then u will never need to join this community and linger around for years and wash yourself with all the herbs and abx the planet and humans have invented....

We like to welcome new lyme people but welcoming new lyme people is not something we like what do u think about that riddle :D

Post Edited (mpost) : 9/15/2017 9:54:15 PM (GMT-6)

don't mess around with this you don't want Lyme or its little friends to gain a foothold in your body else it could take years to wrest control back from them. given what you know i would forge ahead with a full court press on these little buggers.

dr. horowitz has an approach to confirmed tick bites with a rash. i don't remember off the top of my head but maybe girlie or another moderator can post.

with something like this you'd rather be paranoid safe than sorry.

LI11 -

All great responses already.

I just wanted to add a few comments about the Erythema Migrans (EM or bullseye rash).

The ONE definitive thing about the bullseye rash is that even by the strictest Lyme dx and tx guidelines (IDSA), a bullseye rash confirms the presence of the Borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme) and warrants the patient to be given a prophylactic course of doxy.

That's about it. The rest is more difficult to navigate.

The reason everything is so difficult to navigate is that most of the medical dogma that is used to educate MDs is based on outdated science (that subsequent studies has basically disproved). This "science" is literally the root cause of the current Lyme controversy and all the confusion and disinfo that continues to plague Lyme education of MDs and the public, spurring an unmitigated epidemic.

- As mentioned in previous posts, the development of an EM depends entirely on the body's ability to mount an immune response, which is dependent upon the quality of health and immune function. Since 70% of our immune system IS our GI, and given the unhealthy diets of the Average person in this country and the multitude of gastrointestinal issues causing these problems, it is not at all a surprise that most people have poor immune function and therefore don't produce the rash.

- Most people who are infected with Bb do not develop the iconic bullseye rash, shown by multiple studies. And often, when people do develop a rash it doesn't resemble a bullseye, but could still be an EM rash caused by Bb.

- Unfortunately, most MDs are taught that people have to have a strictly classic bullseye characteristic rash with central clearing - or it's not a Lyme rash and therefore no Bb is present. This is one of the many reasons why the CDC "reported Lyme cases" is a fraction of the numbers of people who actually have Lyme - most people don't get tested because of the disinfo regarding the EM rash. At this stage of diagnostics, the Guidelines basically ignore early sx.

- A person can be lucky enough to develop an EM, get a prophylactic dose of abx, and not be effectively treated. The IDSA Guidelines have been proved by many studies to be ineffective and most Lyme specialists and other more informed MDs will opt to treat with twice the doxy dose (200mg b.i.d.) and for a minimum of 6 weeks and longer if symptoms warrant.

- Due to the early and outdated science, MDs are taught to "treat the rash" or in other words
......a) the prophylactic abx is intended to get rid of the rash.
......b) when the rash is gone, the Bb is gone
......c) if the rash remains after prophylactic tx, some MDs even insist it can't be Lyme.

So, the only indication the presence of the rash provides is that the immune system has discovered a subcutaneous presence of Bb and it's gone to work on it, creating inflammation, other mechanisms causing the redness.

The presence or absence of it doesn't give us any additional information. Many Lyme patients report that the EM can show up at any time, anywhere not associated with a bit or the location of a bite. I started developing recurring EMs a year into ceftriaxone IV.

Hope this is helpful -

-p