posted
Has anyone used Galaxy Diagnostics in NC for Bartonella testing? My LLMD believes in their work, but I'm hesitant to spend the money for another test.
-------------------- Misdiagnosed with CFS for 7 yrs. Diagnosed by LLMD in 2009. Aggressive treatment for 3 years with minimum improvement. Posts: 120 | From FL | Registered: Jun 2009
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posted
Yes, we did the test for my daughter. We all thought bart was a big factor for her, but her test was negative. I am not sure yet if this means it is one more negative test that doesn't mean much or not.
Posts: 984 | From US | Registered: Dec 2007
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-------------------- Misdiagnosed with CFS for 7 yrs. Diagnosed by LLMD in 2009. Aggressive treatment for 3 years with minimum improvement. Posts: 120 | From FL | Registered: Jun 2009
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CD57
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 11749
posted
how much is the test and what does it cover?
Posts: 3528 | From US | Registered: Apr 2007
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posted
We paid $800 for a series of 3 blood tests. We took blood samples 2 or 3 days apart. My understanding is that the lab then somehow cultures the blood and is able to grow more bartonella. Then they do PCR testing on it.
You can do just one test for less, but it is supposed to be more accurate to do 3.
Posts: 984 | From US | Registered: Dec 2007
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posted
Kim I would ask your LLMD why not just Challenge bart with treatment and see if you herx?
*Borrelia (40 species in No. America and 300 worldwide) *Babesia (> 100 species) *Bartonella/Bartonella Like Organisms (26 species) ...*Ehrlichia/Anaplasma *Mycoplasma (9 vs. >100 Species)
Save the money challenge with treatment
Paul
Posts: 925 | From Connecticut | Registered: Aug 2010
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posted
Chootik I have currently only treated Lyme and Babesia so there are others on the board who would know which drugs are for treating bart with the most success
personally I would get on A-Bart (Byron White)which is an Herbal treatment you can find the datasheet here.
posted
We did the galaxy bart lab. It was negative just like every other bart lab we did.
But lo and behold after many months we got a positive bart test from specialty labs.
And we actually got a positive IgM Lyme test from Quest. This is nothing short of a miracle.
Bottom line: LD and cos are clinical diagnoses. See a LLMD.
-------------------- You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'
---Eleanor Roosevelt Posts: 748 | From somewhere | Registered: May 2010
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I have an LLMD but thought testing for Bart would be good, since I highly suspect Bart and maybe that can put an end to my issues.
Posts: 247 | From Ca | Registered: Feb 2007
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posted
hey chootik, testing for Bart is about as reliable as testing for Lyme as far as I'm concerned (and experienced)
Talk to your LLMD and explore tx for Bart. We postponed Bart tx for a long time b/c of neg test results. Looking back I wonder if this was a mistake.
If I had to do it over again I'd opt to treat the bart despite the negative tests.
-------------------- You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'
---Eleanor Roosevelt Posts: 748 | From somewhere | Registered: May 2010
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posted
Here is what the Galaxy website says, but no indication whether Dr. Br is still working with them:
"In the interests of pursuing more clinical research, we are suspending our commercial testing service for a short time. Please contact Amanda Elam at 919-354-1055 or [email protected] for more information.
For more information:
* Join our mailing list. * Email us at [email protected]. * Call us at (919) 354-1055."
Posts: 8430 | From Not available | Registered: Oct 2000
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posted
I posted above in June that we did the test for our daughter. It was negative.
Her doctor at the time thought that was the best possible test and that her result meant we should focus our efforts elsewhere first. He did not rule out bart treatment forever.
Then, we changed doctors and the new one added bart treatment, along with other meds. First, she was on Bactrim and improved. She developed an allergic reaction to that and had to stop. She declined again.
When we added Cipro, she is improving again.
Based on our experience, I would want to treat it if there are symptoms present.
I think the Galaxy test is just another one that a positive is meaningful, but a negative one is not necessarily.
Posts: 984 | From US | Registered: Dec 2007
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posted
Negativ test for bart or babesia and lyme equal to nothing so save your money for treatment.
Your LLMD have to tell you the order which infection to treat first and based on your load with what .
Is it good to know what infection we have yes it is but it is so hard to have a positive test on this infections so sensitivity of the tests is less then 30%.
In the other hand with positive or negative test for this infections a good LLMD will treat you for all of them regardless of tests.
If it does not you need to find onother LLMD.
Take care
Posts: 482 | From Nebraska | Registered: Feb 2010
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posted
i think the Galaxy lab was the one my Doctor used and said that they had problems recently-all the tests were coming back negative, including mine, so they were changing the labs somehow-he was very vague about it...they had to redraw the blood and retest. We did one of the three redraws still no results. I think the lab is having trouble scaling up.
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