Can you break it donw for me

Mike - I'm new to all this as well. I've had 3 Lyme test thru 3 different drs office, all came back negative, but I know I have Lyme. I decided to just treat for Lyme and not worry about spending more money on testing. I'm doing Buhner's herbal protocol and am doing much better. I still have a lot to learn and a ways to go, but much better than I use to be.

I could have this confused, but I believe Traveler explained it like this. When your immune system tanks, it no longer produces the antibodies that the Western Blot test is testing for, therefore you get a false negative. I hope I didn't mess that up too bad.

Testing is not 100% accurate, and some test are even less accurate than others.

Also - Testing can only indicate whether your immune system has created antibodies to resist the infection not the infection itself. so depending on your bodies resistance, or depending on how long you've been infected it may not be indicated on a test.

Since testing is not accurate, some people will end up needing an LLMD assessment and a clinical diagnoses based on symptoms.

The ELISA and western blot are based on your immune system mounting a fight. It does not directly look for the bacteria. So if you have been sick for awhile or tested too early, you might get a partial response or none at all which would give you a negative. If your negative on the ELISA you will not automatically get a western blot done.

The bands on the western blot represent parts of the bacteria. For example, band 41 is the tail (flagella). So if you get a positive there your immune system indicated that it has seen the tail. But the tail is common on some other bacteria. So most LLMD's don't consider it "lyme specific". Some of the bands that ARE lyme specific are 23, 31, 34, 39, 83/93. These "parts" are not seen in other bacteria so if you get a positive on these your body is reacting to a part of borellia burgdorferi. Unfortunately, the commonly used labs (Labcorp & Quest) don't even report on bands 31 and 34. They were taken off the blot back when the Lyme Vaccine was being used.

The CDC requires 2 IGM bands, yet they only test 3 bands (23, 39, 41) and 5 IGG bands. So you need a super strong immune system which most of us that are sick do not have. If we did we wouldn't be sick.

When I got my Igenex lyme test I thought I had gone to the top dog of lyme testing. The best of the best, right?

When I got the results I read this at the bottom of the page:

Diagnosis should not be based on laboratory tests alone. Results should be interpreted in conjunction with clinical symptoms and patient history.

That shattered most of my reliance on ANY testing. I now ask to read the bottom line or fine print BEFORE I pay for a test.