Perhaps the most troubling problem with the Lyme screen test is that it is not a very sensitive test and can miss someone who has Lyme disease. There are several inherent problems with Lyme disease testing that often lead to misdiagnosis or lack of diagnosis. It is surprising that with everything we know about Lyme disease and the antibodies associated with it, that the CDC has yet to alter its criteria to reflect the current research. So it is possible that some patients who experience Lyme disease symptoms and have a negative test, may actually have a different strain of Lyme disease that the tests do not detect. For example, we now know that many cases of Lyme disease on the West Coast of the United States is caused by Borrellia miyomotoi, which does not get picked up on the Lyme Western Blot. To complicate this further, there are now over 100 known strains of Borrellia in the United States and over 300 species worldwide and the Lyme testing is primarily looking for only one type (Borrellia burgdorferi). We have since learned that some of the antibodies that we test for are specific to Lyme disease and other antibodies are not specific to Lyme, but may reflect exposure to some other type of microbe. So in more than 20 years of studying Lyme disease, these outdated criteria are still used today. This group held several meetings and their conclusions were published in 1995. I should point out that the criteria for determining if a Lyme Western Blot test is positive is based on a CDC-led scientific group that included the FDA and State laboratory directors back in the early 1990’s. So the current testing does not distinguish between active and past infection and is an unreliable marker for when someone may have been exposed to an infected tick. I have seen patients with IgM antibodies that we suspect their exposure was from many years prior and others with IgG positive antibodies that was a recent exposure. One study found that in 55 people with known Lyme disease, less than 46% of them had either IgG or IgM antibodies on their initial Lyme screen test. But in Lyme disease, this does not necessarily hold true. By that logic then, someone who has an IgM positive test would suggest his or her exposure to the Lyme organism was recent and someone with an IgG positive test would indicate a past infection. The CDC does not recommend doing a Lyme Western Blot IgM test on anyone whose illness occurred within the past month.Ĭonventional immunology teaches that the immune system will undergo a predictable immune response after exposure to a microbe, with IgM being the first antibody to respond to an infection, followed by the production of IgG in later stages of the illness. If someone has at least 5 out of 10 antibodies for IgG or 2 out of 3 antibodies for IgM, then the Lyme Western Blot is considered positive.
Lyme western blot labcorp series#
The Lyme Western Blot looks at a series of specific antibodies against the Lyme organism for both IgG and IgM. If this test is positive, then a second test called a Lyme Western Blot should be run to confirm the results of the first test. The first step is to run a Lyme antibody blood test, which measure two types of antibodies against Lyme disease (immunoglobulin G or IgG and immunoglobulin M or IgM). The current recommendation by the CDC for someone who is suspicious of having Lyme disease is to run a two-step process. Here is a brief excerpt from my upcoming book on Lyme disease, “ The Lyme Solution: A 5-part Plan to Fight the Inflammatory Auto-Immune Response and Beat Lyme Disease”. Now that it is 25 years later, we have learned a great deal about Lyme disease and the pitfalls of Lyme testing have been revealed. When I was working as a microbiologist in the early 1990’s, Lyme testing was still pretty new and we didn’t know much about Lyme disease and all of the nuances of testing that would soon follow.
Ingels spoke at a past Restorative Medicine Conference and is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Restorative Medicine Herbal Certification program.
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