everyone always says go igenex but i was wondering if anyone had ever had a positive western blot.
my primary did one and it was negative with a negative elisa. stupid to have them if they always come back negative.
but have you ever heard of a positive western blot?
Posted by mojo (Member # 9309) on :
I had a positive on a Quest (Quest!) band 41 so the Dr. orderd the Igenex Western Blot and I was IGg and IGm postive.
Posted by yanivnaced (Member # 13212) on :
My wife was positive on Elisa and Western Blots. Her Western Blots were done at some weird labs. The first one at "Shiel Labs" and another one at "Enzo Labs".
Posted by tanzi2u (Member # 9237) on :
prizewinner here: every band was positive - on a Quest test even! This was on the test given after treatment.
The first test is the runner-up: all but 1 band was positive (Quest again), before treatment.
Posted by bettyg (Member # 6147) on :
randi, are you asking this?
have you had positive western blots by ANOTHER LAB; not IGENEX? it's not making sense the way it presently reads....sorry.
if yes, please edit your subject line and add the extra words i have in all caps; thanks!
to edit, click paper/pencil icon opening up both subject line and body text; add more words; make sure you marked lower left hand box for all replies, and click edit send.
Posted by randibear (Member # 11290) on :
betty, i was asking if anyone has ever had or heard of a western blot being positive.
and,no, i will not edit my post.
and yes, i did have a negative western blot, then tested positive for igenex in several categories.
Posted by merrygirl (Member # 12041) on :
I had a CDC positive WB thru quest!
neg elisa (shocker)
Posted by DakotasMom01 (Member # 14141) on :
Hi Randi,
Yes , I had 5 positve bands in Igg and 1 in Igm.
Labcorp {in NJ} did my Western Blot, via my Rheummy , in 2006. { No mention of Igenex on my test results, if that matters to you.}
Prior to this, I was sick for 17 yrs and never tested for Lyme, therefore untreated.
Posted by echostef (Member # 12867) on :
Go Randibear! I understood your post just fine!
Yes, I had a both a positive ELISA and Western Blot thru Labcorp at Baylor Grapevine (I'm sure you know where that is).
My LLMD said not to bother with Igenex for me since I was clearly positive.
We did, however, go thru Igenex for my 8 year old daughter. She tested negative thru Labcorp and positive thru Igenex.
Your fellow Texan, Stefanie Posted by sfcharm (Member # 9392) on :
I was CDC positive via Western Blot. I was negative Elisa.
Barb
Posted by ICEiam (Member # 7519) on :
Randi,
Both my daughter and Granddaughter were tested at IgeneX, both were positive.
HUGS,
Posted by Geneal (Member # 10375) on :
My neighbor was CDC positive for IgM and IgG via LabCorp.
Her parents were both CDC positive via IgM and IgG via Igenex.
I didn't, but Quest found IgM band 23. What a shocker!
Hugs,
Geneal
Posted by Michelle M (Member # 7200) on :
Well, just like Betty -- I thought you must mean 'on a test other than IGeneX,' since many here are positive.
Both my daughter (15) and I tested CDC positive at IGeneX. Negative ELISA's, naturally. Witnessed bites and rashes in both our cases.
This might be helpful:
From IGeneX testimony to the Senate:
quote:"For the year 2003, just to give you an idea, we had tested 698 patients suspected of Lyme disease. Three hundred and ninety-four were positive by either Western blot or antigen test or PCR. If we had gone by the CDC criteria only, we would have missed 70 percent of this 394 cases.
In other words, 56% of the Lyme disease tests performed by IGeneX Laboratory in 2003 were positive."
Michelle
Posted by heiwalove (Member # 6467) on :
CDC positive via igenex, negative everywhere else.
Posted by adamm (Member # 11910) on :
THe only test I ever showed bands on was the Igenex.
Posted by treepatrol (Member # 4117) on :
Priming with abxs
I was on abx's for the beginning of the 3 day urine test and continued on the abxs at the end of the month both 3 day urine test and western blot were high positives for two strains.
Posted by KS (Member # 12549) on :
Negative ELISAs but had positive WB (CDC criteria) from Quest and 4 months later from Igenex too
Posted by lymemommy (Member # 12495) on :
my son was cdc positive Elisa and IgM through Quest, to go along with the 20+ em rashes that the doc said couldn't be Lyme.
He was elisa IgG and IgM positive through igenex.
Gee, I guess he has Lyme.
kp
Posted by hopeful4 (Member # 8486) on :
I had a negative ELISA and a positive IGENEX Western Blot.
When you say your Igenex Western Blot was negative, do you mean it was CDC negative? There is also a guideline that IGENEX has to determine positive or negative. Which one did your doctor go by?
I also wonder which bands you tested positive for.
Another thought to keep in mind is that lyme disease is a clinical diagnosis, based on history, symptoms, and labs are taken into consideration.
Well wishes, Hopeful4
Posted by randibear (Member # 11290) on :
when i was first tested it was by my primary care doc. he did the western and elisa. when the results came back, he only told me they were negative and i did not have lyme. idiot.....
he didn't give me any paper results and i, being stupid about lyme at that time, didn't ask.
only later did another doctor send my blood to igenex where i tested low, but in all the bad categories, so, yep, i tested positive at igenex.
Posted by Lymetoo (Member # 743) on :
Randi...If you tested positive with Igenex, then you have a positive Western Blot. Thousands of people have had positive Western Blots....but not me.
Posted by randibear (Member # 11290) on :
what???? then how come my primary did a western blot and elisa and said negative, then i show up positive when the results came back from igenex.
i don't understand, having a stupid day i guess. what with everything with my mom and all, i'm lucky to be able to get my reservations done.
or maybe my primary didn't know how to read or maybe quest lab (oh horrors) didn't test accurately for it.
hmmmm, i am confused!!!!
Posted by Tracy9 (Member # 7521) on :
My husband was positive Elisa, .583, 9 bands on Western Blot, so CDC positive for BOTH IGG and IGM, from Quest Labs.
My son was Elisa positive and had bands 23 and 41 from Quest Labs.
I had band 23 and negative Elisa from Mayo Clinic Labs.
Posted by Michelle M (Member # 7200) on :
See the link stickied to the top of the forum, Dr. C's explanation of Western Blots.
In particular, the section below describes how poor the testing can be. I mean, REALLY bad and inconsistent. IGeneX uses more strains of borrelia in its testing and also considers bands 31 and 34, which are omitted by other labs.
__________________________
Lyme Testing: The Problems Rarely Appreciated
Many good and sincere physicians have been trained to perceive Lyme testing falsely, and some are even infectious disease consultants.
Lyme is a very sophisticated bug. It is partially related to the bug that causes syphilis. There are literally well over a dozen reasons for missing the diagnosis.
First, that bulls eye rash is a good sign you have it. But many other "bite" patterns or rash patterns can also be Lyme. In fact only 1/2 get any kind of mark or rash. And only 25-50% have the popular bulls eye rash. Sometimes a bulls eye rash is not on a part of you body you easily see and so is missed.
1. Lyme can hide by a number of ways from your immune system.
2. If your immune system is not tuned up and working very well you can be found fully negative on multiple lab tests.
3. Most tests for Lyme are antibody tests. Antibodies, also known as immunoglobulins, are proteins that recognize something foreign in the body like infecting bacteria and help remove it. The first and most common test your doctor usually orders is an ELISA antibody test. Again, if the Lyme is hiding well or your immune system is fair, you will come up normal.
Specifically, the ELISA test missed 56% of confirmed Lyme patients (Archives of Internal Medicine 15:761-0763, 1992).
In another study, it was in some ways worse. In this one the ELISA test missed over 70% of people with early Lyme disease, and 46% with late manifestations of Lyme. (Laboratory Medicine 21:299-304, 1990). Meaning, it missed 70 out of 100 people with the early disease. But it was still negative after the bug was in the body for a long time -- still missing 46 of 100 seriously infected people.
4. For some, the Lab is a place of perfect science. A place which has purely objective fact. In Lyme this is not valid. In one study, 55% of the labs could not accurately identify blood samples with Lyme, which led to the conclusion in a prestigious infection journal that: screening tests for Lyme disease are not adequate (Journal of Clinical Microbiology 35:537-543, 1997).
What About the Western Blot? Is That Definitive?
The Western Blot is merely another antibody test. However, it is more specific than the ELISA. The test can test for 25 possible "bands" that relate to parts of Lyme or other infections.
But the routine Western Blot typically done has massive errors. In one serious test of the Lyme Western Blot testers, there was a stunning finding. They used nine clearly infected patients and sent their blood to 18 labs.
Of the IgG type of antibody, some labs were wrong. They missed 10 of 18 samples.
For the IgM type of antibody, the labs were occasionally so bad they falsely reported Lyme as absent in 16 of 18 samples (Arch Intern Med 150:761-763, 1990).
1. Most physicians are taught to do the ELISA first. If that is positive then "confirm" with the Western Blot. The big confusion is that this is not a way to diagnose. It is the CDC's way of generally tracking the movement of Lyme in locations and states. It is not a way to determine whether you, personally, have Lyme!
If you use the Elisa first method with the confirmation Western Blot, you miss massive numbers of individuals with Lyme (Journal of Clinical Microbiology 34: 10-9, 1996). From this two-stage approach, you may have a sense that Lyme is entering your state at an increased rate, but that does not address your individual concern.
2. The CDC guidelines seem to express clearly to me that these two lab tests were never intended to be the final measure of whether you have Lyme. They report the main diagnostic criteria are what you report to your doctor and what they find on a physical, i.e., "clinical findings." (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/lyme/diagnosis.htm)
3. Another government agency, the conservative FDA, has issued a bulletin explaining that a person may have active Lyme disease and yet may have a negative lab result. Meaning, diagnosis should be based on the history of what happened to you -- symptoms, exposure to the tick and physical findings (http://www.fda.gov/medbull/summer99/lyme.html).
4. Congress and the President have felt that negative labs have been used to keep people from needed treatment. United States Congress Public Law 107-116 explains that labs that are negative have no relation to Lyme diagnosis in a person and refers to the CDC that lab monitoring and testing with Elisa and Western Blot was "developed for national reporting of Lyme disease: it is not appropriate for clinical diagnosis."
Some bands may be fairly specific to Lyme: 12, 22, 23/25, 31, 34, 35, 37, 39, 83***
Finally, some feel the PCR test is the best test. Most PCR tests are performed by laboratory which almost never find it in positive people. However, the PCR test should be done by IGeneX, Medical Diagnostic Labs or another tick disease specialty lab, it is fairly useless. PCR testing can have a false negative of 30% in those with positive Lyme. It is also good to test the PCR from blood serum, whole blood and urine, so they have more ways to look for the illness.
These are excerpts from a book in manuscript by: Dan Kinderlehrer, MD., appearing on the website of Dr. Schaller of Florida (publishes free articles at personalconsult.com). --------------------- ***Note from Michelle: actually bands 18 and 30 are considered specific to Lyme as well.
Posted by map1131 (Member # 2022) on :
Lab Corp has tested me for Elisa lyme maybe 6 times in the last 9 years. All were negative. Therefore there is no need to proceed with the western blot part of the test according to their policy.
Igenex tested me 4/2002 and my IgM Western Blot was 8 bands + (or ++ or +++), 4 bands -/+ equivocal. IgG part of my test from Igenex was messed up, so it was not able to be performed.
Didn't waste the blood or time & expense of doing the IgG over again. Why bother? LLMD said your IgM is soooooo positive, IgG is irrelevant.
Like I've said for many years. Some labs wouldn't know lyme antibodies and western blot if it bite the United States of America President in the rear.
Pam
Posted by Lymetoo (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by randibear: what???? then how come my primary did a western blot and elisa and said negative, then i show up positive when the results came back from igenex.
Simple.... Quest's Western Blots are WORTHLESS!!! [usually]
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