Has anyone used Medical Diagnostic Laboratories? My doctor wrote me a lab order for both the western blot and the Elisa tests as well as most of the co-infections from this lab.
Does anyone know the quality of their Lyme tests? The good thing is that it is covered by my insurance, but I don't want it to be a waste if the results are unreliable.
Posted by Lymetoo (Member # 743) on :
They're not as good as Igenex, but you MAY get a positive out of them. They are a little better than Quest or LabCorp. I don't think they test for ALL POSSIBLE bands though.
Posted by beck (Member # 43653) on :
Do you know how good they are on the co-infections?
Posted by t9im (Member # 25489) on :
beck:
Make sure you ask for the band readings on the Western Blot in advance.
Some labs only report positive or negative and you want to know the bands.
I'm assuming this lab will follow the CDC protocol 2/3 and 5/10 to be considered positive and use the NIH standard (BB 31) which will exclude 2 lyme specific bands.
Good luck
Posted by beck (Member # 43653) on :
Thanks Tim. I am going to try and get the actual results myself. I am too curious to wait until I go back to the doctor to find them out. Posted by Rumigirl (Member # 15091) on :
MDL used to be much better for TBD's than they are now in my experience. I forget whether it is different management or policies or what. I just know that they were more accurate for these infections before.
As usual, I would believe a positive test result, but not necessarily a negative test result.
Posted by hopeful4 (Member # 8486) on :
I was recently tested using this lab. My doctor said it's a good lab to test for the various infections. Also, my insurance covered it.
(Background: I became ill in 2000, first diagnosed and began treatment in 2005.)
I've been struggling with increased, persistent fatigue and cognitive problems for most of this year. He wanted to recheck me for possible infections.
The results showed that currently active for me are HHV6, Epstein Barr, Lyme, and Anaplasma. This is the first time that HHV6 and Anaplasma have come up in testing.
These results were confirmed with AK (applied kineseology).
It's helped greatly to have these results, and work on treatment.
Best wishes.
Posted by hopeful4 (Member # 8486) on :
Just looking at my test result page. MDL also tests for:
I'm not sure if any others are tested for.
Posted by beck (Member # 43653) on :
Thank you all for your input.
They test for these too:
Rickettsia rickettsii (RMSF) HHV-7 and 8 Parvovirus Hepatitis C Toxoplasma gondii
and many others.
They are covered by my insurance, so I figured they are worth a try. To get all of these done elsewhere would probably cost a fortune. If the lyme test comes back negative or indeterminate then I will probably just go ahead and do the Igenex test.
I called them and asked if they report the actual bands or just a positive or negative and they said they include the bands in the report. They also said they test for all of the bands, but I won't know this for sure until I get the report back.
I had a difficult time finding a lab to draw the sample for me. My LLMD's office could not do it and Labcorp said if they draw the blood then they can only send it to their lab. Same with Quest. Thankfully, my pcp is part of a large medical clinic with their own lab and since I am a patient there they said they could do a courtesy lab draw if I supplied the tubes and was responsible for shipping them to MDL myself.
I called MDL and they shipped me a test kit that included the test tubes, instructions on how to collect the samples, instructions on how to ship the samples, and return packaging.
Hopefully, the results will be at least somewhat helpful.
Posted by Rumigirl (Member # 15091) on :
One thing to be aware of, If you do tests for the same infections from different labs, your insurance may not pay for the tests from another lab. Of course, many insurances don't pay much for Igenex tests anyway.
Anyway they can avoid paying, they do!
Posted by Robin123 (Member # 9197) on :
Anyone who qualifies as low income can get 75% off of IGeneX testing through www.lymetap.com
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