Advanced Lab - Lyme Culture

[Sonshine]

DS has a positive lyme culture from Advanced Lab (picture of spirochete) Have any of you had a positive culture with all other testing negative? How reliable is this test? Waiting for results from Quest/MDL and not sure what to expect.

[philamom]

My daughter was positive twice through this lab. First in Dec 2011, and again this past June. She mainly tests positive with Igenex, but there have been times when the Igenex test is negative - the borrelia can go into cyst form and not yield a positive. There are other reasons for negative results form traditional testing as well. Bottom line in my opinion - positive advanced culture means lyme disease. Seek treatment.

Edited November 21, 2014 by philamom

[Sonshine]

Thank you for reply

Edited November 23, 2014 by Sonshine

[mama2alex]

My DS and I both repeatedly tested negative for Lyme on the Western Blot, even using Igenex. We both had positive Advanced Lab cultures in Spring/Summer 2013. Eva Sapi, who's a well respected Lyme researcher, did a study using seropositive Lyme patients and healthy controls to determine the accuracy of the culture. They had no false positives and I believe a 6% rate of false negatives. You can find that study on the Internet pretty easily. The culture looks for all strains of Borrelia, not just Burgdorferi, and it can't tell you which strain you have. But I think this is good because more than one strain can cause illness. I'm with Philamom - I'd consider this a confirmation of Lyme and move forward with a Lyme-literate doctor.