Watched Mystery Diagnosis. Patient was confirmed to have Lyme after being diagnosed with MS . What is this test? DR said it checked for the actual Bacteria not the Anti-body....Anybody??
Posted by hurtingramma (Member # 7770) on :
Could it possibly be a blood culture, which searches for bacteria and/or yeast?
Posted by BorreliaBrain (Member # 7603) on :
I don't know what the heck they were referring to with that test... I have the show recorded.
So, as I often do with dialogue I miss, I played it back with the 'closed captioning' turned on, and it wrote "Bact." test whenever they said it.
Have no idea what "Bact." test is supposed to be, except that it may be short for 'Bacterial'?
Some kind of PCR test I imagine....?
Posted by TerryK (Member # 8552) on :
I thought he said something about looking under a microscope but I could be mistaken.
Here is what I found regarding a BAT test for lyme but this does not look like what they mentioned in the show.
BorreliaBrain- I didn't see your post before I posted.
I don't have much time left this morning but I did find this test: BacT Microbial Detection System
I found this but don't have time to read further since I have to go to a doc appointment. You might want to look at the pdf that further describes the use of the test. Don't know how useful it is for lyme.
Title Detection of Selected Fastidious Bacteria Author(s) Gary V. Doern Identifiers Clinical Infectious Diseases, volume 30 (2000), pages 166-173 DOI: 10.1086/313586 PubMed ID: 10619747
Availability This site: PS | HTML | PDF (90.1k) Copyright � 2000, the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Abstract The intent of this article is to describe the optimal methods for culture recovery of 7 fastidious bacteria: Legionella species, Brucella species, Francisella tularensis, Leptospira species, Borrelia burgdorferi, Bartonella species, and Bordetella species. These organisms share much in common beyond the fact that their genus names all end in the letter "a." Culture recovery of these organisms, even from adequate clinical specimens, is logistically demanding, often costly, and lacking in both timeliness and sensitivity. In addition, there is generally no need to recover culture isolates on which to perform antimicrobial susceptibility tests because these 7 bacteria are nearly uniformly susceptible to specific, clinically useful antimicrobial agents and because, for some of them, susceptibility tests of proven reliability have not yet been devised. Perhaps for these reasons, alternative, more rapid, direct diagnostic approaches have been developed that are based on either immunochemical or nucleic-acid detection methods. These methods have generally served to supplant culture as a primary diagnostic modality. Situations exist, however, in which culture may be desirable, if not necessary, to establish a definitive diagnosis of infection with these 7 organisms. This review attempts to summarize how best to proceed in those cases
Posted by Kadinza Seregon (Member # 13147) on :
I just got on to look up the test myself to see what the cost was. I saw the segment on Diagnosis X last night. I am just an undergrad, but I try to take in as much of these shows as I can. I saw one last year where the outcome was Methemoglobinemia, and when I saw the symptoms on a recent show I was sure I knew what it was and what test to run to find out. I have a photographic memory so I am hoping to take some of this knowledge with me. However I did have a question with the Lymes diagnosis. I really thought the pain was more debilitating that was indicated on the show? I guess the symptoms can vary from patient to patient.
Posted by bettyg (Member # 6147) on :
welcome kadinza! what are you majoring in?
yes, each lyme WITHOUT S pain is different as well as ALL the symptoms!
i just sent you my newbie package of 63 pages of links, advise, symptoms, tests, disability, much more including TREEPATROL'S archive of over 1000 links of good lyme info!
yes, i taped it and watched it after getting of the board last night; some good points; many MISLEADING points. Posted by Lymetoo (Member # 743) on :
" However I did have a question with the LYME diagnosis. I really thought the pain was more debilitating that was indicated on the show? I guess the symptoms can vary from patient to patient."
Yes, it can be VERY severe....worse than post-operative pain. However, some patients have NO pain. For some, it's all neuro.
Welcome!! Posted by Xava (Member # 11437) on :
I caught the end of that show as well, and looked at the research... what I read, from 2002, seemed to make it sound as if the BacT test was superior to the WB.
BUT I don't see any reference to it on ilads' site...
Does anyone have any idea? Interesting that the resident used that test, altho I don't know what he used in the beginning of the segment to test her.
Thanks!
Posted by 6t5frlane (Member # 8628) on :
Found this. It's called Borreliacidal Antibody test. Suppose to be more accurate then a WB
Posted by treepatrol (Member # 4117) on :
Its not superior the spirochetes dont even use the blood that much they prefer tissue. Although if you find one spirochete and put it in a petrie dish and it multiply's then you have something. Like Lida Mattman.
Posted by Xava (Member # 11437) on :
yes of course, but who does cultures anymore...
Just confused as to what was said on show vs what I read about BacT, didn't seem to match... but didn't tape, so thinking I could be confused, as usual.
here's an edited version of an abstract on this test: --------------------
Ability of the Borreliacidal (BAC) Antibody Test To Confirm Lyme Disease in Clinical Practice
Highly specific borreliacidal antibodies are induced by infection with Borrelia burgdorferi, and a borreliacidal antibody test (BAT) may be an accurate laboratory procedure for confirming Lyme disease in clinical practice.
To investigate this, 34 Lyme disease sera and 34 sera from patients with other illnesses who had presented to a primary-care facility located in an area of borreliosis endemicity were tested by the BAT and Western blotting (WB).
The BAT was more sensitive (79% versus 65%; P = 0.090), especially in cases in which patients had a single erythema migrans lesion (P = 0.021). In addition, the potentially cross-reactive sera were negative by the BAT but WB yielded three (9%) false-positive results.
The results from 104 sera from possible Lyme disease patients demonstrated the clinical usefulness of the more sensitive and specific BAT. The BAT was positive for 40 (38%) sera from patients with Lyme disease-related symptoms and appropriate clinical and epidemiological findings.
WB confirmed Lyme disease in 30 (75%) of the 40 BAT-positive patients but failed to detect B. burgdorferi infection in 10 BAT-positive patients. WB was also positive for 11 BAT-negative sera, but six (55%) patients had case histories which suggested that the results were false positives.
Collectively, the results confirm that the BAT is a sensitive and highly specific test and suggest that widespread use would increase the accuracy of serodiagnostic confirmation of Lyme disease.
Steven M. Callister,1,2,3* Dean A. Jobe,1,3 William A. Agger,2,3 Ronald F. Schell,4,5 Todd J. Kowalski,3 Steven D. Lovrich,1,3 and Jennifer A. Marks1,3
Microbiology Research Laboratory,1 Section of Infectious Diseases,2 Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation, Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center, La Crosse, Wisconsin 54601,3 Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene,4 Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 537065
Received 22 January 2002/ Returned for modification 7 March 2002/ Accepted 25 March 2002 ----------------
Thx!
Posted by pineapple (Member # 11904) on :
Of course gundersen is going to tell everyone this is a highly sensitive and specific test.
They hold the PATENT. There has been no other published evidence determining that this is better than the Western Blot.
Posted by BorreliaBrain (Member # 7603) on :
But... what if it is good? How come it isn't commercially available? How come no one I know had ever even heard of it before?
Could they be keeping this test away from the public because it would confirm a whole bunch of us are making Borreliacidal antibodies?
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