Diagnosis for Lyme Disease

Lyme disease is a "clinical" diagnosis (like depression), which requires a knowledgeable “Lyme-literate” doctor to piece together the clues.  Diagnostic tests are to support a diagnosis only.

It is currently (2012) not possible to get a diffinitive diagnosis through a regular doctor.  The reason?  The IDSA (Infectious Disease Society of America suggests a protocol for testing that is rarely deviated from.  It begins with the ELISA test which checks for Lyme antibodies, and if you get a positive diagnosis from the ELISA, then the Western Blot antibody test is used to verify the results from the ELISA. For better understanding of these tests got to: http://www.lymenet.de/labtests/brenner.htm.

If you can ask for a test, the ITT/Cytokine test by Neurosciences called "My Lyme Immune ID" test.  Read about it here.

The FDA presented their final guidelines for Lyme disease diagnosis in 1999 here:  http://www.fda.gov/medbull/summer99/Lyme.html

For the most detailed information on how to diagnose Lyme disease see:  Dr. Burrascano's Lyme Treatment Guidelines.  These were updated in 2008 however, you must have Adobe free reader installed to download the file.  You can download your free Adobe reader here.

Important New Tests:

CD-57 –  Research breakthroughs by Dr Joseph Burrascano and Dr. Ray Stricker, Directors of ILADS (International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society) and long-time medical practitioners’, have shown a correlation between the CD-57 fighter cells and Lyme disease.   This is how it works:

Chronic Lyme infections are known to suppress the immune system. The Lyme spirochete can affect all major cell types of the immune system, but it most clearly can impact a specific subset of the natural killer cells. This is called the CD-57 subset, and is part of the immune system which fights cancer.   (Indeed the specialists who have been studying this correlation fear that chronic Lyme may undermine the body’s cancer fighting ability.)

Just as in HIV infection, which suppresses T-cell counts, Lyme suppresses Natural killer cell count such as CD57. As in HIV infection, where abnormally low T-cell counts are routinely used as a marker of how active the infection is, in Lyme disease we can use the CD-57 count to indicate how active the Lyme infection is. When Lyme is active, the CD-57 count is low.

According to Dr. Burrascano and Dr. Stricker, low CD57 occurs in chronic Lyme or when the disease has been active for over 1 year. Often reffered to as the Stricker/Burrascano panel, the count reflects the degree of infection.

*   0 - 60 indicates severe illness

*     60 - 100 the range for most chronic Lyme disease

*     100 - 200 may show improvement, still requires treatment

*     >200 is normal and safe to stop treatment without relapse

If you want to use this test as part of your health screen, Lyme screen or to track your progress here are his instructions and references below:

1. Call LabCorp at 1-800-888-1113. Ask for LabCorp Test # 505026, HNK (CD57) panel. 
2. As an alternative, contact Clinical Pathology Labs at 1-800-595-1275. Ask for Test # 4885, CD57 Panel for Lyme disease 

PCR - The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a technique widely used in molecular biology, and is part of the Western Blot.  However, there are many other sensitive PCR tests which can be used to identify infectious diseases including Chlamydia Pneumoniae, Secondary Porphyria and other co-infections.

Immunoserology  – Immunosciences Lab is now providing a series of panels which appear to be more sensitive than the Western Blot, and test for more sub-species antibodies and co-infections.  Time will tell whether or not these panels will be helpful. For more information see http://www.immuno-sci-lab.com/The%20Immunoserology%20of%20Lyme.pdf   or http://www.immuno-sci-lab.com

Another new test called VCS delivered by Dr. Shoemaker - Read about it here:  http://www.chronicneurotoxins.com/learnmore/lymedisease.cfm

Important Notes on Diagnosis:

• Fewer than 50% of LD patients recall a tick bite or rash. 
• Lyme disease is greatly complicated by dozens of co-infections . 
• Lyme spirochetes can penetrate the central nervous system within 24 hours of tick bite according to Dr. Coyle at Stony Brook University. 
• Sometimes people don't get symptoms for years after they are bitten, so they don't realize they are infected. 
• A 1998 Swiss study showed that only 12.5 percent of Bb positive patients had symptoms.