I asked my PCP dr.'s RN to call Bowen to have them send them the co-infection blood kit. Yesterday I checked after 3 weeks of not hearing from anyone.

Nurse said the dr. has to complete a 15 page Q/A and return it to Bowen.

What is this all about? Have you folks seen it yourself and what all is in it?

Anyone have a copy of what their dr. completed?

I had no knowledge about this Q/A before this. Thanks for satisfying my curiousity.

Here is the Bowen website, where you can e-mail them about the doctor's questionnaire.
I bet you will get some answers. Hope so. http://www.bowen.org/index.html

They tell me my doctor office must request it and they can only fax it to a doctor's office.

I find that curious since Igenex and MDL have great sites and are happy to mail info and collection kits.

They are certified in FL and will soon be FDA approved. The reason they are still a "research" lab is purely political. Dr. Whitaker is a very good researcher. Her cv is wonderful. I think that is also on their website

Bowen labs is moving into a new location in FL by the end of the year. Their testing procedures have been proven but all of that is also political.

If you have any questions please call the lab. They answer your questions/concerns.

Good luck.

quote:

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Originally posted by Nestle:
.......and will soon be FDA approved.....

Their testing procedures have been proven but all of that is also political.

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A standard blood smear generally refers to an examination of the thin edge of a dried and Wright stained smear of peripheral blood under oil immersion lense at 1000x. This is part of a CBC, complete blood count.

The smear is examined for red blood cell morphology, to estimate platelet numbers and do a differential-100 white blood cells are counted and it is reported how many are neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, basophils,eosinophils,etc.

As best I can figure, Bowen uses a fluorescent antibody to tag antigen (for example, the Lyme bacteria) and then quantitates the number seen microscopically. I cannot find further information about their technique.

An antibody-antigen complex is like a lock and key. Although some keys may look alike only the key specific for the lock will open it. So, to test for 13 strains of Babesia would require 13 different flourescent tagged antibodies.

I phoned Bowen and asked for which Babesia do they test. No information was available.

Same dilemma with Ehrlichia.

janet

Hi folks,

Using Ann's wonderful suggestion, I emailed Bowen, and here is what I received back promptly!

"All the pages that were faxed to your pcp is not for him.

Breadown:

pg 1 letter of Protocol physisican
2 information page about test
3 letter to office manager
4 protocol for lab if blood is collected in pcp office
5 Final Report Request is the ONLY page that the physician is require to sign and sent to us
6 copy of patent for our test
7 protocol for patient to take to outside lab to have blood drawn
8 is kit order form for the blood kit(our kit consist of 2 tubes, stryoform & mailing sleeve not necessary unless lab requires it)
9 thru 13 is paperwork that the PATIENT needs to fill out and RETURN with the blood once it is drawn for us.

The cover page that is faxed with the protocol explains to KEEP the last seven pages for master file.

If after this breakdown and you still have problems, have them to call the office back 727 937 9077 and I will try to help them understand the paperwork.

This is the protocol for all physicians, this is the first time that I have had anyone to say that all the pages were for the physician.

Please email me back if you still have a problem. Alice, Bowen labs"

PS - I also informed Bowen's Alice I was posting this breakdown of the 13 pages to lymenet.org web site. They APPROVED this and had 1 minor addition to no. 8 which I just changed to their wording.

bettyg, Iowa

I used Bowen for my test and it was a piece of cake to fill out the forms. They are right about the Dr. having to only sign one form. Maybe they are reluctant to do it. By the way Bowen is a reputable firm no matter what others think. If not for them alot of us would be dead or in wheelchairs. Thank you very much!!!!!!!!!! Also compared to all the other labs they are cheap!

quote:

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Originally posted by Nestle:
FDA approval is not even needed for a lab. Next time you look at lab work see how much has FDA approval. FDA approval is just a money making scam! Look at all of the FDA drug recalls.

Karen

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If they don't get FDA approval, no insurance company will ever cover it, trust me. It is a big deal. With something as controversial as this, they need it to become legitimate. Most of the good Lyme docs won't even pay any attention to those results let alone order them.

As I mentioned above over 7,000 people wouldn't have known they had Lyme if it wasn't for the Bowen Q-RIBb test, because they were negative on other Lyme test. Those 7,000 test were ordered by doctors, I don't believe all of them would fall into your category of not being good Lyme doctors. My family and most of my support group members are a part of this number, and we are all seeing good Lyme literate doctors. I know because we are all getting well.

Bowen Lab is in research status, that is why insurance companies usually don't pay for the test. However, Bowen is allowed to ask for the donation of $250 for the test.

FDA approval doesn't determine whether or not an insurance company will pay for the test. In a few cases I have heard where some people's insurance companies have paid for the Bowen test. Other labs test for Lyme are not FDA approved, however some are covered by insurance. For the tests that aren't being reimbursed by insurance companies, his doesn't mean they won't be in the future.

The bacteria that causes Lyme doesn't fit into the usual FDA requirements for approval, hence the reason none of the Lyme test are receiving FDA approval. So much more published research needs to be done. Also, one must realize that there is a reluctance politically motivated to hold back the truth about how prevalent Lyme is in the US.

SandiB

I used to be on the Bowen bandwagon. I know all about what they do, but my mind was slowly changed when I saw the evidence that they really don't know what they're really looking at. They don't have musch credibility with the top Lyme docs. That's a fact.

If people want to know if they have Lyme, they should use IGenex and try one other place like Medical Labs, and maybe do another IGeneX WB for piece of mind. Not that you have to be 100% CDC positive at IGeneX, but if you can't get near the bands needed to have Lyme per the IGeneX standard with two tries, then it's highly likely that you don't have Lyme and you have another disease that has similar symptoms.

Bowen's tests are not proven effective and I would have to bet that they won't ever be proven effective because it seems that they all come back positive. My LLMD was really sold on Bowen but even he has turned around and does not use it any longer. And my other LLMD won't even order tests through them because he is convinced that they are not worth the time or money.

I informed Alice, Bowen, I had posted their breakdown to the lymenet.org web site. Alice's supr. APPROVED doing this, but had 1 minor addition to no. 8 which I made now.

I'm not planning on getting the Bowen test, but I am going to school right now in hopes of doing borrelia research one day, and I already spend endless time speculating about the details of what is going on in borreliosis. I study every scrap of info I can get since the disease is so poorly described. I have always figured Bowen probably knew what they were looking at, but cant be certain, and I am really eager to hear precisely/concretely why you take the opposite view. Assuming what they observe there is correct, it is highly important in its differences from published descriptive studies of lyme, of which there are very few, and most of them possibly incomplete for one reason or another.

Feel free to email me if you want.

1. There are people who talked about there were negative tests reported through Bowen.

2. I am one of them. I was positive with Bb, Babs and HGE. After treatment the Babs and HGE tests were negative.

I tested positive of Bb through two separate labs.

I am not a doctor or a lab tech, so don't ask me how the test works, but for me these tests showed a logical progression.

But I know anyone who says 'every test from Bowen is positive" is either misinformed or trying to stir people up.

The researcher said that even if there was some cross reacting going on with similar strains, that most likely, these other strains react in the body the same way as Bb and therefore may respond to the same treatment. So...the point is that many of us are infected with something that responds to antibiotics and the Bowen test is revealing it. I am not saying though that the Bowen test is not accurate in detecting Bb, I'm just saying that we need to pay attention to the results it is getting.

Lida Mattman's lab was shut down for finding lyme in too many patients...especially M.S. patients. Her test confirmed 100% of the positive bloods sent to her by Dr. Whitaker. Now politics seems to be aiming their arrows at the Bowen test.

Take the Epstein Barr virus for example ...that is just one of many viruses that is in most of , if not all of the population. Why does this seem so impossible with lyme? It is strongly suspected that lyme is not just passed through a tick bite. It has been found in milk off the grocery store shelves, mites, fleas, breast milk, semen, placenta , tears, well water and even african dust.

24bit, its your views I'm interested in... I've read old threads on this in past months, but according to the search engine this is the only preserved thread where you have addressed this subject.

I'll tell you what I think. As daystar says, EBV is known to infect most healthy humans. While much less well known, overwhelming evidence indicates that the same is true of more than one bacterium. See the work of Bisset, G.G. Tedeschi, Phyllis Pease, and more recently R. MacLaughlin. The possibility of widespread seronegative asymptomatic borrelia infection should not be considered implausible at all. What would be strange is the same titers existing in sick and healthy humans. Therefore I am surprised Bowen has not commented on whether the titers correlate with illness (or published in a refereed journal for that matter).

would you kindly edit your long web address to 2 lines so I can read the contents here without scrolling left/right since I started this post? thanks so much ... I can't read it this way.

Could it be this is why titers showing the prevalence of one germ may not correlate with the patient's morbidity?

For example, I believe that Prof Nicolson feels that while mycoplasma indeed causes problems in many who are chronically ill, that it may be a cofactor which has to be present with another microbe in order to do the job right. Biowarfare agents often are a combination of several microbes or parts of microbes inserted into another.

Dr. S in PA said that he has treated people down to the point where the culture does not pick up any glowing bacteria, and usually these people feel better at that point, or in 'remission'.

This was before they had the 'load' number. Then it was not 100% exact, but you could see if the ABX was working based on seeing less and less green, and the all important thing, feeling better.

But I agree with GiGi on this one, when you get a chronically ill person, it's usually more than Lyme that is making them sick at that time. It's usually many factors, not just Bb.

And I am not just speaking for myself when I say not every one tests + for Bowen. There have been people on this site that have tested - on various infection tests At Bowen the first time through.

I don't know how perfect the test is or not, but I just wanted to point out the statement that everyone posts positive is not true!

(I know, I sound like a broken record...)

As far as I know, they do controls with the bacteria to make sure they are not getting cross reactivity.

Yes, my monitor is that size ... It has ENLARGED many things for my lower eyesight that I could not read otherwise.