Co-infection testing advice please

[Sirena]

I am trying to do a "case review" of my son's medical journey and I want to revisit the co-infection possibilities. We tested for a bunch things but I want to make sure we didn't miss anything. So,

 

1) Which co-infections/ infections should we have tested for?

2) Which labs are the best (Is Mayo okay?)

3) If husband had anaplasmosis, could kiddo have made antibodies? Seems crazy but sister is a strep carrier and seems to affect ds.

 

Thanks!

 

[LNN]

The most common co-infections are mycoplasma (multiple strains, many can't be tested in commercial labs), bartonella, babesia, anaplasmosis and mold.

 

As to which labs, I'm hoping other Lymies chime in. We just did Bart and myco testing but I don't get the hard copy of the lab results until next week (I only have verbal that they were negative). So I don't know which labs were used. But I know Mayo was not one of them.

 

I assume you've used Igenex for the basic Lyme panel? If not, I would consider re-testing. Igenex reports on bands not reported by other labs and they also report Indeterminate bands (meaning the bands weren't dark enough to qualify as positives). other labs don't report indeterminates, which is misleading. You don't produce even a light band unless you've been exposed. So an IND is most likely a positive but a weakened immune system couldn't mount a strong enough response to turn the band dark enough to be called positive.

 

I do not believe your child would produce antibodies against anaplasmosis just by being exposed to your husband. I think it is possible to react/produce antibodies to a strep carrier because your own body has likely seen strep before and can whip up a batch of antibodies just by "sensing" an impending infection from a carrier. But I think it'd be unlikely to produce antibodies against such a rare antigen like anaplasmosis unless there was a direct infection. Not certain but that's my guess.

 

After reading your signature, I think it's great that you're giving everything a review. My own experience is that when I couldn't get my kids into a sustainable remission, I was missing something. So far, it's been mold as the culprit - mold in the school building, which of course took a long time to figure out. Consider running some of the labs listed here http://www.survivingmold.com/diagnosis/lab-tests

This is what Shoemaker suggests for kids

Do you order the same labs on children that we see on your physician’s order sheet?

No, see the labs we almost always obtain in kids in the IACFS paper on this site. HLA,

MSH, C4a, MMP9, TGF beta-1, CD4+CD25++CD127 lo/- (NB this is a test only obtained from

Quest Baltimore), AGA, ACLA.

We started with HLA, C4a and MSH. That was enough to convince us mold was an issue.

[Sirena]

Thanks! Your response is VERY helpful!!