posted
This may be very common, but I wonder if it means anything specific to have Igenix positive for both IGG and IGM western blot? In the past I only had IGM pos, now both. Thanks!
Posts: 28 | From Los Angeles | Registered: Jun 2016
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TF
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
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posted
Getting more positives means that your immune system is recognizing the lyme bacteria and making more of the various antibodies needed to kill it.
So, that is a good thing.
Read Dr. C's explanation of the Western Blot here:
This thread can be found in Medical Questions forum under "Important Info about LYme and Coinfections" They keep it at the top of Medical Questions all the time. That is called a "stickie."
As the good doc says, your body does not make one big antibody that fits perfectly around the lyme bacteria. Instead, it makes a number of antibodies that fit onto various parts of the lyme bacteria.
So, if the lyme were an elephant, you would have one antibody that fits on its tail, one that fits on its leg, one that fits on its head, etc.
Each of the bands on the lyme WB is designed to attract a certain lyme antibody--the tail antibody is Band 41. The other bands that are significant for lyme are designed to attract other antibodies that fit onto other parts of the lyme bacteria.
This is how our bodies kill any bacteria. They make a number of different antibodies that fit onto the bacteria and kill it that way. So, the Western Blot is designed to attract each of these different lyme antibodies by molecular weight. The band number is the molecular weight--of the tail antibody (band 41) for example, etc.
So, if you read "Cure Unknown" by Pamela Weintraub, you will see how many years it took and how many Western Blots before her young son finally got enough bands for the doctors to consider him positive for lyme disease. NOW he was worthy of treatment (and not before).
That is the ridiculous CDC system that uses the WB in a way it was never designed to be used.
Igenex also has established criteria required to call the IgG positive and the IgM. But, in the end, lyme is still a clinical diagnosis, meaning that the clinician (the doctor) has to evaluate the entire situation and use his judgment to determine whether or not it is likely that the patient has lyme.
I think that in general you can be happy that your immune system is recognizing the lyme more over time. But, then again, others will say that the test is really a crap shoot. Sometimes they get one band positive and another time they get a different band positive.
I don't know enough about this to say for sure, so I think you can just safely say that your immune system is definitely not out of commission. Rather, it is still working, so that is a VERY good thing.
As Burrascano says, after one year of lyme disease, the immune system has broken down to a clinically significant level--it is now significantly weakened by the lyme.
See this quote:
"Illness present for at least one year (this is approximately when immune breakdown attains clinically significant levels).. . .
Chronic Lyme is an altogether different illness than earlier stages, mainly because of the inhibitory effect on the immune system" (p. 3)
"An unfortunate corollary is that serologic tests can become less sensitive as the infections progress, obviously because of the decreased immune response upon which these tests are based.. . .
Similarly, the antibody titer may rise, and the number of bands on the western blot may increase as treatment progresses and the patient recovers. Only years after a successfully treated infection will the serologic response begin to diminish." (p. 4)
So, to me I would be happy with this result as it would indicate to me that perhaps your immune system will bounce back well during treatment and you will be fortunate to get rid of this horrendous disease and not relapse.
If you have a strong immune system, with the aid of the antibiotics killing the germs, the immune system can get on top of the situation and mop up any remaining lyme bacteria and also deal with any that come out of cyst form later.
So, the better your immune system is working, the more quickly the treatment will get you to symptom-free, and the less likely you are to relapse and need treatment again in the future.
I hope that, in addition to looking for a pediatric lyme doc, you are also looking for a doctor for yourself. Having 3 folks in the family with lyme can be overwhelming. I hope you take advantage of the folks here who are always willing to support you and help you through the lyme treatment process.
We will keep answering your questions every step of the way!
p.s. It may help if I explain a little about the following sentence in Burrascano:
"When reactive, serologies indicate exposure only and do not directly indicate whether the spirochete is now currently present."
What Burrascano is saying is that any antibody test can NOT tell you whether the bacteria is currently present. All it can tell you is that the bacteria (lyme, for example) was present at one time. That is what caused the patient's body to make antibodies to lyme.
So, when a doctor tests a patient like me (who had lyme and was treated for it and got rid of all of my symptoms 10 years ago) and the WB is positive, that does NOT mean that I currently have an active lyme infection. Nope. (I DO still test positive for lyme on the WB.)
I have no symptoms of lyme. I had lyme in the past. I was treated for lyme in the past. But, my blood is still circulating antibodies to lyme disease.
Those little soldiers aren't taking any chances.
I will likely have a positive WB for lyme for the rest of my life. "Only years after a successfully treated infection will the serologic response begin to diminish." as Burrascano says.
So, if I get lyme in the future, the WB will be of no help whatsoever to the doctors. They will have to diagnose me purely on symptoms (or test me with a test that directly looks for the lyme bacteria).
My positive lyme test indicates exposure only and NOT active disease.
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