My friend's son is 7 years old and just started complaining of knee pain. First one knee then the other... The pediatrician tested him for leukemia, cancers... all negative. He's scheduled to visit an orthopaedic surgeon soon. They did not perform a lyme test. We live in RI and there are tons of ticks here. The kid almost lives in the trees in his backyard.
Upon hearing the story I suggested she have him tested for lyme. Knowing that the 2 tiered CDC elisa screen followed, if positive, by a western blot (WB) is not a good plan, I suggested she ask for a WB up front. But, unfortunately, they did the Elisa screen and it was negative.
I told her that I had heard there were lots of false negatives with that test.
Does any one out there have a good reference for a paper that quantifies the sensitivity of the screen that she can take to the MD and use to insist upon a WB?
I think I'll order a kit from IGENEX tomorrow to give to her.
Thank you all so much for the help!
Allie
Posts: 300 | From Northeast | Registered: Dec 2006
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minoucat
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 5175
posted
ILADS also has a position paper about the 2 tier approach and the ELISA test -- it's not a "research" paper but it lays the information out very clearly and it does reference articles in peer-reviewed journals to support its position. See http://ilads.org/cdc_paper.html
They also have a good "Basic Information" thing you can print out for your friend: http://ilads.org/basic.html
Thank you dearly for your help! This is exactly what I was hoping to give to my friend. I just hope that if her little boy has Lyme they find it. If he doesn't I hope he doesn't have anything horrible!
All the best, Allie
Posts: 300 | From Northeast | Registered: Dec 2006
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posted
it's interesting that the RI duck isn't treating for lyme.
a friend lives in RI, is a master gardner and spends most of the year outside. she started having vague symptoms-achy muscles, sore joints. thought it was the flu. went to her md-he immediately treated her for lyme. said with her being outside, the proper testing can take 2 weeks for results(think he was talking about labs like igenex. she was better after 1 month of abx
i live in montana and it took 3yrs of illness before i found a llmd in colorado. i thought it was great that she was treated so easily. sorry your friend is having such problems
Posts: 76 | From Kalispell, Montana | Registered: Dec 2006
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posted
My daughter first showed signs of Lyme by complaining of achy knees. After 14 months of this she continued to get worse and the doc's did all the same tests to "rule" out other diseases like cancer, lupus, leukemia, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis,( all negative) , etc.......but didn't want to test her for Lyme. What is the problem????
Posts: 263 | From Georgia | Registered: Feb 2006
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