PCR of blood is known to be low sensitivity for several of these infections RW
the reason is mainly that the organisms are not in the blood in any number most of the time
this applies to bartonella in particular and lyme/TBRF also - so you can have a positive results but its hit and miss - because there could be a single detectable organism in the blood or none - depending on the day of the draw.
with Bartonella - it is why Galaxy do 3 draws on different days and then culture the result to grow up numbers - and then pcr the result of that - even then they only claim 49% sensitivity - so you can see how hard it it to detect bart in blood via PCR - its probably more like 20% in a straight single draw then PCR
so to me this is all now consistent
-Lyme - igenex CDC positive - very hard to argue with and also explains the cross reactive EBV antibodies when EBV PCR was negative
-Bartonella positive by immunoblot - again high specificity - very hard to get a positive test for bart - but this one is clear - note. in the past tests for B. Henslae and Quintana ( the two normally tested by serology) will have been negative as these tests would not normally detect Vinsonii as teh antibodies are specific.
-TBRF positive in past for TBRF via PCR - and now positive by immunoblot - pretty clear and consistent too
also as discussed in various other threads - when tests have low sensitivity but high specificity it is a mistake to weigh a negative result against a positive one. this is because in those circumstances a false positive is approx. 5-10x less likely than a false negative so when you get positives they should carry 5-10x more weight in your deliberations than negatives
it rarely seems to get clearer than this - so I would say the hunt for the infection is over - bring on the treatment!
