Now that we’re in the height of ‘tick season’ it’s important to protect yourself and your family from ticks and tick bites. In any event, the best way to treat Lyme disease remains to avoid it in the first place. Fever, shivering, muscle and joint pain – even if you missed the tell-tale ‘bulleye’ rash – are strong indications of an infection, so it’s worth asking your doctor to double-check the results with a Western Blot test if the ELISA test comes back negative. This is why, just as doctors don’t rely on the ELISA method to confirm infection, you shouldn’t rely on that test if you are suffering the symptoms of Lyme disease. Depending on the strain of Lyme disease, these proteins might not be present and therefore the test will show up as ‘negative’ when in fact the patient really is infected. This is because the ELISA test only looks for certain antibodies, produced by certain proteins of b. However, less well known is that the ELISA test can also provide a false negative – as in, a result that fails to detect the presence of those antibodies, when in fact the patient is infected with b. This is why no doctor will make an ‘official’ diagnosis for Lyme disease without following it up with a positive test using the Western Blot method. In fact, it’s not uncommon for the ELISA test to deliver a ‘false positive’ for Lyme disease, meaning that it indicates the presence of the Lyme-fighting antibodies when they’re not actually present. The ELISA test is the quickest and most convenient way to test for Lyme disease, but it’s not foolproof. An ELISA test can detect Lyme disease anti-bodies – which are the cells your immune system creates to fight (ineffectively) the b. The most common test is ELISA – an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay which identifies peptides, proteins, antibodies and hormones in blood. One reason for the inaccurate reporting is the way in which doctors test for Lyme disease. In fact, some estimate that just 10% of cases of Lyme disease are reported to the CDC – meaning literally millions of Americans are walking around unknowingly suffering the impact of this debilitating illness. In the past decade, nearly 300,000 cases of Lyme disease have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) but the CDC themselves admit that the true number of infections is probably much, much higher. It’s caused by the bite of a tick – most commonly Ixodes Scapularis, or black-legged or deer tick – when the bacterium inside the stomach of the tick is regurgitated into the host’s bloodstream following feeding. burgdorferi bacterium, remains one of the fastest-growing diseases in North America. Lyme disease, the debilitating illness caused by the b. So, if you suspect you have Lyme disease – what’s the best way to find out for sure?
#WESTERN BLOT ASSAY FULL#
Lyme disease is one of the fastest-growing vector-borne diseases in North America – and the full story is worse than that.
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