I have heard others here claim you can get false negatives or have infection markwers come up after treatment. Any help?
Posted by nenet (Member # 13174) on :
That's odd to hear coming from an LLMD. Yes you can absolutely have false negatives, for several different reasons.
One of the reasons is there are new human-infectious strains being discovered all the time, and the current tests only look for one or two strains.
There are other reasons as well. Testing for ALL tick-borne diseases is poor and is inadequate for *ruling out* infection.
I have always understood that LLMDs generally diagnose co-infections as they do Lyme, as a clinical diagnosis (which even the CDC advises to do).
Posted by MariaA (Member # 9128) on :
I'm guessing he's talking about the Galaxy Labs one? It's new and I think tests for more strains than previous ones did.
Posted by lou (Member # 81) on :
Even with galaxy, I would wonder if there is any lab test that is fool proof because they keep finding new species. Would a genus test work, and does anyone have one?
Posted by jkmom (Member # 14004) on :
My daughter did the Galaxy test and it was negative.
Pretty much every LLMD who has ever seen her thinks she has bart.
Even the doctor who ordered the test thought it meant we should focus elsewhere since it was negative, but not rule it out completely. A few months later, we are talking about bart treatment again.
Obviously, we can't be sure she has bart, but it seems that the Galaxy test is not definitive for her LLMD.
Posted by seibertneurolyme (Member # 6416) on :
I would do a Clongen bloodslide if all other bart tests were negative. At only $100 if the test showed coccobacilli bacteria at least you would know there was something that needed treating.
Bea Seibert
Posted by seibertneurolyme (Member # 6416) on :
lou,
Pretty sure that both F lab and Clongen have genus species tests for Bart -- but those are PCR tests and by nature PCR tests can have lots of false negatives.