Lyme testing in Ontario Canada

[TessaKrista]

Someone suggested testing for lyme. I have heard that the U.S. has some great lyme tests, whereas the Canadian ones tend to show up as negative, because the levels they use to show positive lyme, are so high, that people generally don't show up as accurately showing their lyme disease. I don't know if I have accurately depicted the U.S. vs Canadian lyme testing differences.

 

Would appreciate your feedback...

 

http://ontariolymedi...com/Testing.htm

 

Above is a link to the lyme disease clinic testing. Wondering if anyone has used them, and what you know about the Ontario tests.

[momcap]

I can't get your link to open, so I can't comment on the specific clinic. If you do regular lyme testing here in Ontario we only use one strain of borrelia for the WB test. There are many strains of borrelia that you could be infected with, so the tests miss a lot. Also, we use CDC criteria, which is very narrowly defined, and misses so many cases. Finally, we don't report bands. Your test will read IgM/IgG "present" or "not present" with no further information. So in our case, my PANS son's test came back IgM and IgG not present, with no further info. When we paid for testing in the U.S. we discovered he had a combined EIGHT bands, but not in the right combination for a CDC positive. He even has positive band 83-93 which is the DNA material of borrelia. I can't imagine how he could have antibodies to lyme's DNA unless he's been exposed to lyme. You need to have private testing done if you want further information, such as bands.

 

If you do the lyme test here it is covered by OHIP and if it comes back positive IMO there's no doubt. But if it comes back negative you don't really know anything. AND, in our situation because of DS's negative lyme test the dozens of docs we dealt with (including 2 Infectious Diseases Docs) completely dismissed lyme because in their minds the negative test rules that out. Docs here are not familiar with lyme. They don't seem to understand that it is a clinical diagnosis and tests are not conclusive, but only support a clinical diagnosis. My lyme test IS CDC positive. So even with my positive test, a dog with 3 bullseye rashes, and a son with 8 lyme bands, our docs still don't consider it because he tested negative. It blows my mind that they can be so ignorant. So we see a LLMD in the US.

 

http://www.canlyme.com/

https://sites.google.com/site/drjoneskids/lab-tests/tests-explained--dr-crist

http://www.lymenet.de/labtests/brenner.htm

 

You may also want to consider the new lyme test that cultures the borrelia directly from the blood. It doesn't measure antibodies, but actually finds the bacteria itself:

http://www.advanced-lab.com/news/borrelia_culture_update.php