posted
IgeneX in my opinion, hands down.
Posts: 106 | From Rural Michigan | Registered: Jul 2011
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WPinVA
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 33581
posted
LabCorps is actually decent for babesia duncani. Picked mine up. My LLMD always starts with LabCorps.
Worth a shot to save money if your insurance will cover it there, and IgeneX is always an option for later.
Posts: 1737 | From Virginia | Registered: Aug 2011
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posted
IgeneX is a good option for Lyme itself - they are the standard for the Western Blot. They also have some decent Babesia and Bartonella diagnostics. Insurance often qualifies for reimbursement.
Advanced Labs has a great (but expensive) panel for Lyme itself, but the star test here is the Lyme Culture - the only one of its kind to date. The downside is that its newness also means expense...a package with culture will easily run $600, and insurance may not reimburse properly as, at least a year or two ago, they do not have a specialty CPT code for their culture study, so just billing for "cultures" means that the insurance company will treat it as if it was a common strep culture and only reimburse what they'd pay for one of those easy, cheap ones (ie $150).
Fry Labs isn't the place to go for Lyme itself, but is the best solution for many co-infection tests. Babesia, Bartonella (or a BLO) etc.. will appear on their blood smears and are identified via gene sequencing. The "star" test however, is the Protomyxzoa Rheumatica diagnostic - this is a separate and unique stain/smear followed by confirmation with gene sequencing. Fry is the only place with a decent Protomyxzoa diagnostic, and I recommend it to anyone who is not responding to treatment - often Protomyxzoa I believe is the cause of the most difficult tick borne illness complexes and unfortunately, it is still poorly understood and there are few treatment protocols or medications that are designed specifically for attacking it.
LabCorp is the best of the "conventional" labs - they even have a pretty decent Babesia WA1 test and have absorbed the Hemex (specialty coagulation biofilm and hematology studies) labs tests under the name "Esoterix". Their pathogen diagnostics for Lyme etc... aren't up to par, but for general bloodwork, CD57 etc.. they're a good way to go. LabCorp accepts most insurance plans from the get-go, so you don't have to wait around for reimbursement.
Those would be the places to start for actual infective pathogen testing.
Posts: 690 | From East coast, USA | Registered: Jun 2006
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quote:Originally posted by WPinVA: LabCorps is actually decent for babesia duncani. Picked mine up. My LLMD always starts with LabCorps.
Worth a shot to save money if your insurance will cover it there, and IgeneX is always an option for later.
I believe Labcorp has discontinued offering Babesia duncani (WA-1) testing, and now only offers Babesia microti tests. I went through this this past summer. I believe there is some other posts about them discontinuing duncani if you use the search option.
If you had the test done real recently, please share the test#, as perhaps they offer it again.
Posts: 106 | From Rural Michigan | Registered: Jul 2011
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-------------------- --Lymetutu-- Opinions, not medical advice! Posts: 96222 | From Texas | Registered: Feb 2001
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map1131
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
Member # 2022
posted
I've tested negative 2 times with Igenex on all co-infections. Lab corp has always been negative too.
There is no doubt I have a strain of bartonella by my sx. I'm almost positive I also have babesia. I was in denial about babs for years.
I believe the strains with the regions in the world, and our country just make it difficult to properly test.
Pam
-------------------- "Never, never, never, never, never give up" Winston Churchill Posts: 6478 | From Louisville, Ky | Registered: Jan 2002
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