What Happens If You Go Untreated For Lyme Disease
If you happen to test positive for Lyme disease but go untreated, then your symptoms may increase significantly. You may develop early-onset arthritis, facial palsy, and inflammation of the brain stem and spine. Those symptoms can affect how your brain works and your ability to function cognitively.
How Much Do At
Generally, at-home Lyme disease tests cost around $100, while others may cost closer to $500. The difference comes down to how many pathogens you are hoping to test for. On average, the test will look for two or three, but more expensive tests may screen for 10 to 15.
Depending on your insurance and which test you select, it may be covered. Another option is to pay for the Lyme disease test with your HSA/FSA, since some companies will accept that as a payment form.
Clinical Approach To Patients With A Chronic Lyme Disease Diagnosis
Even if CLD lacks biological legitimacy, its importance as a phenomenon can be monumental to the individual patient. This is because many if not most patients who believe they have this condition are suffering, in many cases for years. Many have undergone frustrating, expensive, and ultimately fruitless medical evaluations, and many have become quite disaffected with a medical system that has failed to provide answers, let alone relief.
Beyond this generalization, patients referred for CLD have heterogeneous medical, social, and educational backgrounds. Furthermore, there is great variation in their commitment to a CLD diagnosis. Some patients are entirely convinced they have CLD, they request specific types of therapy, and they are not interested in adjudicating the CLD diagnosis. By contrast, others are not particularly interested in CLD per se, and are content to move on to a broader evaluation. In the authors experience most patients fall somewhere in betweena certain amount of time must be spent reviewing past experiences and past laboratory tests, then explaining why Lyme disease may not account for their illnesses.
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What Is An At
An at-home Lyme disease test will typically be a blood finger prick test.
If you have been exposed to the bacteria Borrelia that leads to the infection of Lyme disease, your body will have created two antibodies to fight it off. The test will look for the presence of both types of antibodies, known as immunoglobulin M and immunoglobulin G .
You will receive your test kit along with account information so that you can get your test results as soon as they are ready. Follow the manufacturers instructions exactly as they are described.
Each test has different instructions, so its very important that you read the kits detailed information before getting started.
Symptoms Of Lyme Disease
A circular or oval shape rash around a tick bite can be an early symptom of Lyme disease in some people.
The rash can appear up to 3 months after being bitten by an infected tick, but usually appears within 1 to 4 weeks. It can last for several weeks.
The rash can have a darker or lighter area in the centre and might gradually spread. It’s not usually hot or itchy.
The rash may be flat, or slightly raised, and look pink, red, or purple when it appears on white skin. It can be harder to see the rash on brown and black skin and it may look like a bruise.
Some people also get flu-like symptoms a few days or weeks after they were bitten by an infected tick, such as:
- a high temperature, or feeling hot and shivery
- headache
- tiredness and loss of energy
Some people with Lyme disease develop more severe symptoms months or years later.
This is more likely if treatment is delayed.
These more severe symptoms may include:
- pain and swelling in joints
- nerve problems such as pain or numbness
- heart problems
- trouble with memory or concentration
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Diagnosis Testing And Treatment
You may have heard that the blood test for Lyme disease is correctly positive only 65% of the time or less. This is misleading information. As with serologic tests for other infectious diseases, the accuracy of the test depends upon how long youve been infected. During the first few weeks of infection, such as when a patient has an erythema migrans rash, the test is expected to be negative.
Several weeks after infection, FDA cleared tests have very good sensitivity.
It is possible for someone who was infected with Lyme disease to test negative because:
If you are pregnant and suspect you have contracted Lyme disease, contact your physician immediately.
- Report being bitten by a tick, or
- Live in, or have recently visited, a tick-infested area.
About Chronic Virus Infections In Lyme Disease
Treating chronic viruses is controversial. In this article, I describe the best virus tests to help determine if treating chronic viruses will help. I also describe when and how to treat chronic active virus infections. When chronic viruses are active, in my experience the best treatments include herbal antivirals and natural immune boosters.
In chronic Lyme and associated diseases, a variety of infectious agents may cause health problems. For some to recover requires treating Lyme and other infections transmitted by a tick like Bartonella, Babesia, Ehrlichia, and Anaplasma. Some must also treat parasites, yeast, and chronic viral infections.
Chronic virus infections occur in healthy people, too. The trick is to determine if they are causing a problem when they exist in someone with Lyme disease. These germs are kept under control in healthy people and do not usually cause any ongoing health problems. However, in chronic Lyme disease, they can become active due to immune suppression. This can lead to ongoing fatigue, body pain, and many other Lyme disease symptoms.
If a person is not recovering from Lyme disease after six to nine months of treatment, then test for the viruses and treat if testing is positive.
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Microbiologic Investigations Into Chronic Lyme Disease
There is very little microbiologic evidence that supports persistent B burgdorferi infection in patients who lack objective manifestations of Lyme disease, such as erythema migrans, arthritis, meningitis, and neuropathies. Advocates for CLD contend that our ability to detectB burgdorferi is hampered by current technology and an incomplete scientific understanding of B burgdorferi, and that conventional diagnostic testing misses patients with CLD., Naturally, this raises the question of why we should assume that chronic B burgdorferi infection exists at all if we are so ill-equipped to detect it. Even when chronically symptomatic patients have a well-documented history of treated Lyme disease, investigators have been unable to document persistent infection. A recent study in which ticks were allowed to feed on persistently symptomatic posttreatment patients yielded molecular evidence of B burgdorferi in 1 of 16 patients and no patient had cultivatable organisms.
Because validated testing methods fail to support the connection between B burgdorferi and clinically diagnosed CLD, physicians who specialize in CLD often turn to alternative tests. This has included the use of novel culture techniques, detection of B burgdorferi DNA in urine specimens, and enumeration of CD57-positive lymphocytes. Independent investigations, however, have repudiated the validity of these tests.
The Chance Of Getting Lyme Disease
Not all ticks in England carry the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
But it’s still important to be aware of ticks and to safely remove them as soon as possible, just in case.
Ticks that may cause Lyme disease are found all over the UK, but high-risk places include grassy and wooded areas in southern and northern England and the Scottish Highlands.
Ticks are tiny spider-like creatures that live in woods, areas with long grass, and sometimes in urban parks and gardens. They’re found all over the UK.
Ticks do not jump or fly. They attach to the skin of animals or humans that brush past them.
Once a tick bites into the skin, it feeds on blood for a few days before dropping off.
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Most Accurate: Dna Connexions
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Test looks for Borrelia burgdorferi, in addition to 10 other common vector-borne pathogens
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Urine Sample
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Does not accept insurance
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No assistance after testing results are received
DNA ConneXions is a company known in the scientific community for its detailed analysis of lab results. This at-home Lyme disease test, for example, is superior to the others because it tests for all 10 vector-borne pathogens, while others only test the most common two or three.
DNA ConneXions earned our most accurate distinction because of its detailed Lyme disease test, as well as its impressive laboratory with a biosafety level 2 lab with a CLIA license. This means the company knows its stuff and is able to help people with accurate testing.
After DNA ConneXions receives your urine sample, it will review your sample, and email you your results within two to three weeks. It is unclear how much support the company offers after you receive your results, so it would be wise to schedule an appointment with your primary care doctor. This is to ensure that your body heals entirely if your Lyme disease test is positive.
This is the most expensive kit on this list, costing about $650 for the full Lyme panel. As of now, it will not work with insurance companies or accept HSA. The DNA ConneXions lab, however, is one of the most trusted laboratories worldwide.
What Happens At Your Appointment
The GP will ask about your symptoms and consider any rash or recent tick bites you know about.
Lyme disease can be difficult to diagnose. It has similar symptoms to other conditions and there’s not always an obvious rash.
2 types of blood test are available to help confirm or rule out Lyme disease. But these tests are not always accurate in the early stages of the disease.
You may need to be retested if you still have Lyme disease symptoms after a negative result.
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Turn On The Immune System
The best way to treat the chronic active viruses is to follow all of the steps in The Ross Lyme Support Protocol, which collectively support the immune system. Often, the immune system will work more effectively and control the chronic active virus infections when Lyme disease and the co-infections are under control.
However, after treating the Lyme infection and the co-infections for nine months or more without major improvements following all of the steps in Ross Lyme Support Protocol, then treat the chronic virus infections with natural medicines described below because they could be an ongoing source of health problems and immune suppression.
What If Lyme Disease Goes Untreated
If Lyme disease goes untreated, it can affect other systems in the body. According to the , common symptoms of later stage Lyme disease include:
- severe headaches and neck stiffness
- additional erythema migrans rashes on other areas of the body
- facial palsy, which is a loss of muscle tone or droop on one or both sides of the face
- arthritis with severe joint pain and swelling, particularly in the knees and other large joints
- intermittent pain in tendons, muscles, joints, and bones
- heart palpitations or an irregular heartbeat
- episodes of dizziness or shortness of breath
- inflammation of the brain and spinal cord
- nerve pain
- shooting pains, numbness, or tingling in the hands or feet
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Choosing A Lyme Disease Test
Often the diagnosis of Lyme disease depends upon the physicians readiness to listen and ask questions and on the mutual exchange of information, beginning with the initial doctor-patient interview.
Often the diagnosis of Lyme disease depends upon the physicians readiness to listen.
Lyme disease should be diagnosed clinically, without reliance on testing. However, all too often, physicians will ignore clinical presentations if laboratory tests are negative. Yet there are numerous scientific articles documenting false negatives and low sensitivity of such tests.
There can be several reasons for the inaccurate results. The sensitivity of the tests varies greatly depending upon how long an individual has been infected and on the type of clinical manifestations. If a patient has received antibiotics in the early stage of the disease, antibody levels may be too low to be detected or nonexistent. Antibodies to Borrelia burgdorferi do not appear in the blood until several weeks after the tick bite. The Lyme bacteria are not always present in the blood. The person could have been infected with a strain of Bb that is not covered in testing.
That said, laboratory tests can be used to support the diagnosis. Because of the varied presentations and necessity of relying on a patients symptoms, several tests may be helpful.
The ELISA and Western blot are the most common tests used to diagnose Lyme disease. Both tests measure antibodies to Bb, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.
The Elisa And Western Blot Are Not Sensitive Enough
Another major limiting factor of the traditional ELISA and Western blot is the quality. These tests tend to use lysed BB cultures, and therefore, depending on the culture conditions, some antigens are over-expressed, and some are under-expressed. This, in turn, can affect the ability to detect antibodies from patients blood.
Whats more, if a patient tests too early after a tick bite, his or her body may not have produced enough antibodies to show up on a test with suboptimal sensitivity.
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Access To Lyme Disease Testing Services
This guidance on the laboratory diagnosis of Lyme disease is intended for healthcare professionals in the UK. Patients concerned about possible Lyme infection should consult an appropriate healthcare professional, for example their GP, in the first instance.
Health professionals wishing to discuss a possible case or ascertain local arrangements for testing should contact a local Infection specialist .
NHS testing for Lyme disease is available through local service providers and the Rare and Imported Pathogens Laboratory at PHE Porton where ISO15189 accredited confirmatory testing is also provided. RIPL is also introducing a testing service for neurological Lyme disease.
RIPL provides medical and laboratory specialist services to the NHS and other healthcare providers, covering advice and diagnosis of a wide range of unusual bacterial and viral infections, including Lyme disease.
RIPL continuously updates its methods and will make further information on Lyme disease diagnostic testing available as it arises.
Is Testing For Chronic Lyme Disease Really Worth It
Updated 9/3/18
Right now, theres a huge proliferation of specialty labs doing testing for chronic Lyme disease and similar illnesses.
Why?
Because its extremely lucrative people are desperate to prove a diagnosis and willing to pay large sums of money out of pocket to do it. Because conventional labs are not meeting the demand, small labs specializing in microbial testing for stealth microbes are springing up everywhere.
Interestingly, just the fact that this is happening illustrates how fundamentally flawed the current view of chronic Lyme disease really is.
Western medicine views all infectious microbial illnesses as basically the same. This dates back to 1890 when a scientist named Robert Koch made some observations about microbes that cause disease.
Kochs Postulates suggested that specific microbial illnesses were caused by specific microbes. In other words, Mycobacterium tuberculosis was the sole cause of tuberculosis. The postulates also defined that the organism must be isolated from the diseased host to make a firm diagnosis. In addition, Koch stated that disease-causing organisms were never found in healthy hosts .
While much of what Koch postulated does hold true for highly virulent microbes that cause severe illnesses , it doesnt apply to much less virulent microbes. Kochs postulates especially fall apart when applied to chronic illnesses like Lyme disease.
The testing for Lyme disease, however, is really not very good.
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What Is The Most Reliable Lyme Disease Test
There is no one answer when it comes to determining which Lyme disease test is the most reliable. This is because each test looks for a different thing at a different stage of the infection. When investigating a long-term infection, tests that look for the bodys response to the infection are the most reliable, whereas for an active infection, a test that identifies the bacteria itself will be the most effective. Some tests only show up on an active infection and fail to indicate chronic Lyme, so the most reliable test option depends on which stage a persons infection is currently at.
Featured image by Emin Baycan on Unsplash
Molecular Testing For Detection Of Borrelia Species Bacterial Dna
PCR is available for Borrelia species DNA detection but is of limited value in routine testing for Lyme disease because the organism is only present in blood during the early stages of the disease and is predominantly restricted to the affected tissues.
Diagnostic molecular testing for Borrelia species DNA is available on request for relevant specimen types. Please call RIPL to discuss individual cases.
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What Is The Best Test For Chronic Lyme Disease
If you think you have the symptoms of chronic Lyme disease, you may be considering testing. But what is the best test for chronic Lyme Disease?
There are lots of different kinds of testing, and in recent years a lot of new companies have come on to the market.
A big difference between other chronic conditions such as chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and Lyme disease is that Lyme is triggered by a specific bacteria. With Lyme disease, we are looking for a microbe known as Borrelia.
There are many different species of Borrelia, which can make things very confusing. Some tests are looking only for Borrelia Berfdorferi, the most commonly associated with Lyme Disease, while other tests are looking for many species of Borrelia.
