Someone messaged me in another forum, and it was actually having to do w/stabbing ear pain I had had a while ago..extremely painful. And she wrote me saying she was apparently told that could be caused by a systemic disease. So she got tested by "an unreliable lab called Igenex"..for Borrelia years ago. And that she's now relying on one called Ceres Nano. She is also being tested by Galaxy labs.
This is disturbing twofold b/c I never thought my stabbing ear pain was due to Borrelia (great-what else?) and 2, that she thinks Igenex is unreliable. Igenex apparently told her she had Borrelia and was treated w/antibiotics and it brought about a host of new problems. Also said that Igenex has since revised their standards and that now, she would get a negative result.
Can anyone shed any light on this?
Posted by TX Lyme Mom (Member # 3162) on :
Ceres Nano Sciences Lab had a display booth at the 2015 ILADS Conf. and their presentation was featured in the plenary session during the conference. This new test is considered to be a major breakthrough in the diagnosis for early Lyme disease because it is a direct antigen capture test which uses a urinary sample vs. the older blood antibody-based test by Igenex.
It takes the body about six weeks to manufacture Lyme antibodies, whereas this newer test will be helpful in determining whether antibiotics are needed during the earliest days following a tick bite. (You might recall that Igenex used to offer the Lyme Urine Antigen Capture Test (LUAT), but it was withdrawn from the market many years ago.)
Although this new lab test is already FDA approved, ILADS doctors are encouraged (and probably required?) to submit their samples through the current president of ILADS, Dr. Samual Shor, for further data collection and analysis by ILADS. (I'm naming him because his name is posted openly on the ILADS website.)
Galaxy Lab offers the newest test for Bartonella. It is the result of many years of veterinary research since 1984 by Dr. Edward Breitschwerdt, DVM who has specialized in this disease at NC State Univ.
PS - I forgot to mention that one of the advantages of this newest Lyme diagnostic test -- assuming that it will be validated by consensus of ILADS doctors following their on-going data collection and analysis of it -- is that this should help to bring Lyme disease into mainstream medicine.
Furthermore, and this is probably my most important point to emphasize is that several speakers at the 2015 ILADS Conf. stressed the importance of treating for a minimum of six weeks, instead of the previously typical one month of treatment, for any suspected case of early Lyme disease.
I honestly doubt that many, if any, infectious disease (ID-iot) doctors will comprehend the importance of longer treatment for early Lyme, but we can always hope and we can keep our fingers, eyes and toes crossed that they will do so.