Does a bullseye rash like mine always indicate Lyme Disease?

Hi everyone!

I'm not from the US and just noticed a very weird bullseye rash on my left leg.

That immediately made me suspicious about the fact that I might have been bitten by a tick.

The strange thing is that lately, while I did indeed travel a lot, I wasn't involved in outdoor activities.

In a normal country like the US, you could just go see a doctor but over here, you can't put much faith in their diagnosis for things like Lyme Disease.

Given the fact that Lyme Disease is particularly hard to diagnose in general with the tests being inaccurate a lot, the chances of obtaining a clear diagnosis in my country are slim to none.

Therefore, I have to self-diagnose through the Internet. Not the best situation you could be in but I hope you can help.

I took 7 pictures of the rash on my left leg, here they are:

http://s2.postimg.org/y7zit34p5/2013_08_06_12_31_02.jpg
http://s11.postimg.org/l3r0s4wn7/2013_08_06_12_31_54.jpg
http://s7.postimg.org/7ieqz6y8r/2013_08_06_16_51_30.jpg
http://s9.postimg.org/da0ra7p8f/2013_08_06_16_52_28.jpg
http://s8.postimg.org/aj906zcd1/2013_08_06_16_52_20.jpg
http://s17.postimg.org/k5v200zcf/2013_08_06_16_52_05.jpg
http://s9.postimg.org/4kcv0umin/2013_08_06_12_31_12.jpg

My rash did itch, especially during the first days, not sure if that helps or not.

Some sources say a Lyme Disease rash may or may not itch, some sources say it never itches.

It appeared about a week ago and wasn't accompanied by fever or other symptoms.

I do have a sore throat, had it for a good while (probably over a week before the rash appeared) but the manifestation was so mild that I didn't pay much attention to it. Still have that sore throat now and maybe a mild case of runny nose that manifests itself once a day.

No fever, no headache.

Could the bullseye rash have been caused by something else?

On the Internet, almost everyone says that if the bullseye rash is present, it tells you that you definitely have Lyme Disease.

What do you think about my rash based on the pics I posted?

Thank you in advance, hopefully your experience will help me.

I agree, you need to get to a doctor and get on antibiotics. If you catch it fast treatment is much more effective.

First of all, thanks a lot for the replies.

Based on my research and on the feedback I received, it ended up being clear to me that what I have is indeed Lyme Disease.

So first thing in the morning, I went to a larger city to ask about the rash. I chose that city because I have more confidence in the ability of the doctors over there to handle this problem.

It turns out that there's actually a study about Lyme Disease going on right now and I was included in that study.

They drew lots and lots of blood (6 little bottles, probably to test whether I already had Lyme Disease, so just in case I didn't have it from this specific bite) and the doctor told me to take doxycyclin 100mg twice/day, once every 12 hours.

So 200mg of doxycyclin daily for 21 days.

Based on your experience, do you think the dosage and the choice of antibiotic is ok?

If you can get a prescription for a whole month of doxycycline I would try just to be safe. Some doctors recommend 3 weeks of doxycycline and then I read somewhere that some doctors recommend a month. I am not sure which would be the most effective but I would take a month of doxycycline anyday if I could have gotten this infection at the time I got bit but I never knew I got bit. Ask your prescribing doctor if you could get an extra week of doxy, and then make sure in between your treatments you take a probiotic to help your intestines so you don't suffer from leaky gut later from the imbalance of bacteria due to the killing off of good bacteria from antibiotics.

First off, 200 mgs of Doxy a day only keeps the bacteria from replicating, it's not a high enough dose to actually kill the Lyme bacteria - for that you will need 400 - 600 mgs of Doxy a day.

about the testing - the ELISA isn't even worth getting. It show false negatives so often it's completely unreliable. The Western Blot is a bit better, but still misses around 50% of those truly infected. These tests rely on the response of the immune system, and they have to know how to read it - which too few do. Many are told that they don't have Lyme because they don't show "enough" bands. Unless the only band showing is band 41, any number of bands indicate an infection! Band 41 response to the tail end of the bacteria, so it can be confused with other infections.

You really need to get a hard copy of your test results and post them and we can help you learn what it really says.

Many people will be exposed to the Lyme bacteria and not show symptoms right away - it will wait until there is just the "right amount" of stress in the body and then it will come out. If you are showing any symptoms you need to have good adequate treatment based on the ILADS standards.

Also, if you have any co-infections like Bartonella or Babesia, these are also known to lower the immune response so that false negative test results happen.

Despite what the "experts" claim, this is far from a simple, straight forward infection. Lyme is a very complex and frequently complicated disease that must be treated individually as we all have different deficiencies in our bodies. Start adding in co-infections and the the situation just keeps on getting more and more complicated.

First and foremost - a Bull's eye rash is the skin form of Lyme disease. So there's little doubt that you have the disease.

I think you will find this info very interesting on your test results though: www.reocities.com/HotSprings/Oasis/6455/western-blot.txt

According to it, there's little doubt that you have Lyme even by blood testing (which is poor at best).

You reacted to these bands on the IgM portion of the test:
35 (specific for Bb{Lyme disease})
41 (the tail of a type of spirochete, but not necessarily Bb)
39 (specific to Bb)
OspC -Outer Surface Protein "C"- (which if it was band 25 it is specific to Bb)

You reacted to these bands on the IgG portion of the test:
83 (specific to Bb)
41 (Flagellin - not specific to Bb)
39 (specific to Bb)
OspC
Band 34 (specific to Bb)
Band 53 (specific to B. Afzelii)
Osp E (which protects Lyme bacteria from "serum-mediated destruction") {iai.asm.org/content/79/4/1451.full}



VslE is an indication of immune evasion - www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1000293

"Lyme disease Borrelia have an elaborate mechanism for varying the sequence of VlsE, a surface-localized, immunogenic lipoprotein. This antigenic variation is thought to be important in immune evasion and thus in the ability of Lyme disease Borrelia to cause long-term infection.


Any way, even though you may not have the "required" number of bands, they are specific for Lyme, so it was the Lyme bacteria (Bb) that caused such a reaction.

This likely makes things as clear as mud, but at least you know! You have many conformations that you have Lyme. If you have symptoms, you need treatment - no matter what "the powers that be" have to say. Pretty simple.

We had another person from Romania and fortunately, they shared some links in this thread:
www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=1997611

I hope you find information that you need!

I don't know if the length of time it takes for the rash to disappear has anything to do with anything to be honest. But the dose of Doxy is too low to have any healing, as at that dose (200 mgs a day) you are only keeping them from replicating - nothing else.

You will need to find a LLMD or other type of doc that really understands Lyme or a very knowledgeable Holistic medicine practitioner that will help the body overcome whatever it's dealing with to find your healing.