New Diagnostic Test for Lyme?
According to Business First Magazine, there is an exciting new technology that has just been licensed by a team of scientists from the University of Louisville (KY) that should offer hope to the thousands of Lyme sufferers who struggle to find a solid medical test to prove their condition.
Although the CDC (Center for Disease Control) states that Lyme disease must be diagnosed clinically (which means that a diagnosis of Lyme disease must be made by a knowledgeable physician by evaluating symptoms, ruling out other diseases and finally using their best judgment), there remains a cloud of skepticism in the medical community and amongst uneducated society at large, concerning the validity of a Lyme disease diagnosis without hard scientific “proof.”
Lyme sufferers face untold hardships due to this skepticism, and are frequently sent to psychiatrists, or in extreme cases, institutionalized. “It was humiliating to be told that my illness was all in my head.” Confides one suffering victim of Lyme disease who can barely speak due to the intense pain in his spine.
For me, it was not as dramatic but equally devastating.
I waited for months to see a specialist (Infectious Diseases) that was supposed to be one of the top experts in Boston. Having written many scientific papers, he was not only a busy practitioner at Beth Israel Hospital, but also a professor at Harvard Medical School.
The doctor barely looked at me, and he certainly never touched me. He didn’t take my pulse, he didn’t listen to my heart, it was clear to me that he had already made up his mind before he ever walked through the door.
He flipped through the hundreds of pages of notes from all the doctors I had seen, all the tests that had been performed, and even a personal reference from my internist in Maine, and leaned back against the wall with his arms folded.
“There is no reason to order a Western Blot.” He said, “We would just be fishing for a “false positive.”
“How can it be a false positive if I have all of the symptoms?” I asked in my shaky voice - fighting tears that to my chagrin had become my constant companion.
The doctor looked away and said, “Well, I don’t know what you have, but I know that you don’t have Lyme disease!”
I have since learned that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of people with similar experiences. Despair doesn’t begin to describe the wave of hopelessness that washes over you when a respected doctor gives you prescriptions for a mild anti-depressant and Vicadin when you are suffering the full effects of Lyme disease.
Perhaps this new technology will eliminate the deficiency of a definitive test for diagnosing Lyme disease, and bring appropriate treatment sooner – halting the spread of the infection and carving years of suffering off of the term of recovery.
How does this test work?
Apparently, it is a new method for analyzing blood (and other body fluids) which uses a type of scanning technology, which shows scientists how blood proteins behave when heated.
In preliminary tests, blood that has been taken from people with rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme disease and lupus all show test results that differ “significantly” from healthy patients.
Additionally the test results present a distinctive pattern for each disease which could also help Lyme researchers to better measure the results of their ongoing trials.
Like many new technologies, in addition to the breakthroughs from the scanner, it will hopefully be a springboard for other researchers to evaluate the blood from people with Lyme disease and co-infections to develop better testing and monitoring technologies to bring critical care to those suffering from the torments of Lyme.
We can only hope.
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