Positive IFA Test Diagnostically Significant?

I had an Eliza which I think is similar to the IFA? Both are used for screening.
Mine was negative so they didn’t proceed with the Western Blot.

Then I tested with Igenex - with the Western Blot and it was positive.

I doubt yours is a false positive.

You must have symptoms if you decided to test ?

What lab was used?

And - welcome to the forum!

from my deep research into the test technologies -

pretty much all serological techniques for Lyme are prone to much more false negatives than false positives - the ratio is something like 5:1 or 8:1 depending on the study design, gold standard chosen ( a huge factor ) and lyme strains used ( lab strains vs wild strains is another big factor )

serological testing will never be black and white because the organism they are looking for actually disrupts the bodies ability to make antibodies that the test detects - ergo - unreliable testing

so a false negative results is 5-8x more likely than a false positive

lesson is - suspect false negative far more than false positive

also CDC criteria is not for clinical use - says so on their website - why doctors and labs persist in using it is a total nonsense - ignore it - should never have made its way in to use on patients

symptoms + IFA positive + some bands on WB, low CD57 = all very suggestive

Post Edited (Garzie) : 9/27/2021 12:37:07 PM (GMT-6)