Testing For Lyme Disease And Co Infections

[looneymom]

My son was tested for Lyme disease two years ago and it came back negative. If you have Lyme disease, can you also have a coinfection? Or can you have just a coinfection and not Lyme disease? I don't understand the difference so this is the reason why I am asking. Is there more than one type of coinfection? If you have a good web site that can explain this information, please share.

I have been doing some research on the antibodies that are being found in PANDAS. I have found an interesting article that compares PANDAS and Lyme disease. After reading this article, I really am wondering if Tyler's Lyme testing was a false/positive test. I am going to make a request to our cardiologist get this testing redone. Has anyone else had a false test when it was positive? If so, What lab retested you?

Rachel

[looneymom]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3292400/

Here is the hyperlink to that article.

Rachel

[Katybug]

Hi Rachel,

Lyme co-infections are other species of infectious agents that are found in the ticks that also carry Lyme disease. The can be bacteria, viral, parasitic, etc. You can have Lyme, a co-infection, or both. Based on my labs, I was positive for babesia (co-infection) and negative for Lyme. However, based on my constellation of symptoms and the fact that Lyme testing is notoriously inaccurate, my Lyme doc treated me for both babesia and Lyme as they require different antimicrobial treatments.

A great resource to understand the nuances of lyme and coinfections is at ILADS.com. If you click on About Lyme, then treatment guidelines, then click on Tips for treatment and guidelines by Dr. Joseph Burranasco (sp?). This is a long paper written by this Lyme specialist that takes you through the A-Z info about lyme. It's long and can be technical but it is helpful.

There is also a book I found helpful called "The Lyme Disease Solution"by Dr. Kenneth Singleton. Hope this helps. It's a complicated issue.

Oh, and co-infection tests have to be ordered individually, meaning that ordering a lyme test won't also make the lab include the co-infections. Each coinfection you want Tyler tested for will need to be listed on the lab order.

[jpjd59]

Rachel:

My daughter had been tested for Lyme twice, both results being negative. We recently had her tested again through a different lab and her results came back positive for Lyme (negative for co-infections).

Pam