posted
To avoid "reinventing the wheel" and to learn from your experiences I am asking for advice about objective tests for Lyme disease.
What tests are currently available?
Knowing what you know now, what would you recommend as a plan to determine if I have Lyme disease?
Thanks.
Posts: 6 | From Oklahoma | Registered: Dec 2009
| IP: Logged |
sutherngrl
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 16270
posted
Lyme Disease is a "clinical diagnosis". The test are inaccurate, but can be used to back up the clinical diagnosis.
You definetly need a Lyme Literate Medical Doctor(LLMD). You can go to the section....seeking a doctor, or check with your local or state lyme support groups to find the closest LLMD.
Many of us have to travel out of state for treatment.
Posts: 4035 | From Mississippi | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged |
massman
Unregistered
posted
What about those LLNDs, LLRNs, LLDOs, LLDCs etc ?
Remember, Chiropractic Doctors go to Chiro College longer than MDs go to Med School
IP: Logged |
TF
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
Member # 14183
posted
The best way to determine if you have lyme disease is to go to a doctor who has successfully treated many, many cases of lyme disease. By listening to your symptoms and examining you, the doc will decide if you have lyme disease or not.
The lyme tests are all so inaccurate (miss about half the cases of lyme) that there is no reliable objective test for the disease. This being the case, you get diagnosed with lyme disease based on your symptoms. That's what we mean when we say lyme disease is a clinical diagnosis.
Read thru the Burrascano lyme treatment guidelines and you will see statements like the following:
"DIAGNOSTIC HINTS Lyme Borreliosis (LB) is diagnosed clinically, as no currently available test, no matter the source or type, is definitive in ruling in or ruling out infection with these pathogens, or whether these infections are responsible for the patient's symptoms." (p. 7)
Also, lyme disease is most often a complex of diseases. To quote Burrascano:
"CO-INFECTION A huge body of research and clinical experience has demonstrated the nearly universal phenomenon in chronic Lyme patients of co-infection with multiple tick-borne pathogens. These patients have been shown to potentially carry Babesia species, Bartonella-like organisms, Ehrlichia, Anaplasma, Mycoplasma, and viruses." (p. 4)
To see the blood tests available, go to the Igenex site (Igenex.com). They are a tick-borne disease specialty lab in California. Good lyme doctors use Igenex to test your blood for lyme and all the coinfections. They don't use Quest or Labcorp because generally the tests done by these labs are useless.
However, as stated, the tests are not completely accurate since we only have tests for a few strains of each disease. If you have a strain that cannot be tested for, you can get a negative test result even though you have the disease.
Perhaps one day our country will spend research money to develop better tests. We have been waiting a long time for that.
Posts: 9931 | From Maryland | Registered: Dec 2007
| IP: Logged |
The Lyme Disease Network is a non-profit organization funded by individual donations. If you would like to support the Network and the LymeNet system of Web services, please send your donations to:
The
Lyme Disease Network of New Jersey 907 Pebble Creek Court,
Pennington,
NJ08534USA http://www.lymenet.org/
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
![[woohoo]](graemlins/woohoo.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic