By Tom Grier M.S.

Three Main Categories of Lyme Disease Tests:

1. Indirect Tests (serum antibody tests):

ELISA; Western Blot; IFA; Borreliacidal Antibody Assay (Gunderson test);T-cell Activation Test

2. Direct detection tests:

PCR (DNA amplification); Lyme Urine Antigen Test (LUAT); Antigen Capture Test; culturing of skin, blood, CSF, urine, or tissue; immune complex / antigen-antibody test

3. Tissue Biopsy and Staining:

Silver Stain; Gold Stain; Fluorescent Tagged Monoclonal Antibody Stains; Acrodine Orange; Gram Stain; Muramidase; etc.

There is a great deal of confusion and controversy surrounding Lyme disease testing. The first problem is that most of the manufacturers of these tests want you to believe that their tests are the best.

At every medical convention, I listen to sales pitch after sales pitch from sales people making their product sound infallible. Often the terminology is confusing and the customer frequently misinterprets what is really being said.

For example, a salesman may say the rate of false positive or false negative is less than one percent. This sounds like the test is more than 99% accurate.

In reality, what it is saying is if you have 1000 test samples from the same known laboratory sample, then in less than ten samples will there be a result that differs significantly from the other 990.

In any of this, did you hear the words: "percent reliability" or "percent accuracy" in diagnosing Lyme disease in humans? No! People often mistake "false positive rate" for accuracy. The truth is that no Lyme disease test to date is close to 100% accurate, because each test has its own particular set of shortcomings.

So, while the first problem with Lyme disease tests is in the way they are promoted, the second problem is the way the tests are primed to recognize laboratory strains of Bb, rather than wild types.

Third, the Lyme spirochete can hide in the human body, and fool the immune system into thinking it isn't there.

So, no antibodies are produced, resulting in negative tests. Stealth technology isn't new, it evolved millions of years ago by the first bacteria that evaded its host's defenses.

http://www.canlyme.com/labtests.html

Editing to add url

Post edited by: cave76, at: 11/13/2008 16:09