Tick-borne diseases in Australia

Joan Crawford said:
I have tested negative using the low quality tests used by the NHS whilst simultaneously having the borrelia bacteria cultured from my blood with ease. The three specific species being identified using immunofluorescence assay.
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As someone with experience with immunofluorescence I would suggest being very wary of that. A positive result with three different organisms strongly suggests an artefact. Everything fluoresces with enough reagent. Immunofluorescent tests are only really meaningful if one thing is positive when everything else is negative. I am pretty sure that all competent labs would dismiss a result like this.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
A positive result with three different organisms strongly suggests an artefact. Everything fluoresces with enough reagent.
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Does Bb cultured in blood suggest an artifact? Besides, you won't find many knowledgeable Lyme patients who like any form of the first tier, IFA or other. But that's what the Lyme gamekeepers prescribed decades ago with a puzzling algorithm, so an entire generation has been stuck with it.

Jonathan Edwards said:
I am pretty sure that all competent labs would dismiss a result like this.
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Dismiss IFA results as part of a 2T? Doubtful. Most labs worldwide adhere to IDSA/CDC testing protocols when it comes to Bb. England simply embraces a newer "compromise" of the 2T, i.e., the C6 ELISA, but ultimately that too was/is promoted by the same folk who promote the different versions of the 2T.
 
Hutan said:
In 2015, while I was living in Australia, I was tested for rickettsias, and tested positive to an active infection. It was never investigated further and I was never treated for it, despite my debilitating 'ME/CFS' symptoms. I think no one really knew what to do. I wasn't able to get my children tested (they had the same illness and time of onset), and we had all been in a range of countries with interesting possibilities for rickettsial infections. Perhaps the situation with rickettsias is no better in other countries?
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Did you know that when Willy Burgdorfer was running labs on samples he was shipped from Long Island, NY, in which he would eventually discover the spirochete the world identifies with Lyme, close to 100% of all the patient samples he looked at tested positive for a ricketsia? The results were so overwhelming that reports are he was convinced ricketsia were behind the Lyme CT outbreak and Montaug knees. Obviously he changed his mind
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
As someone with experience with immunofluorescence I would suggest being very wary of that. A positive result with three different organisms strongly suggests an artefact. Everything fluoresces with enough reagent. Immunofluorescent tests are only really meaningful if one thing is positive when everything else is negative. I am pretty sure that all competent labs would dismiss a result like this.
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I understand it as three different species of the same organism. Ticks are infected with multiple species of borrelia and other co-infections. Natures dirty needles.
 
duncan said:
Got to love the authors that in this paper acknowledge not just chronic Lyme - pretty much every one did back then pre-vaccine craze - but sero-negative Lyme as well. I think two of them were among the dozen or so authors of the 2006 Lyme Guidelines.
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Yip really odd isn't it.

Complete about face with no scientific rationale or justification. Denying their own data. Now where have we seen that before!
 
duncan said:
Did you know that when Willy Burgdorfer was running labs on samples he was shipped from Long Island, NY, in which he would eventually discover the spirochete the world identifies with Lyme, close to 100% of all the patient samples he looked at tested positive for a ricketsia? The results were so overwhelming that reports are he was convinced ricketsia were behind the Lyme CT outbreak and Montaug knees. Obviously he changed his mind
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And he also tripped over some nematodes too. Ticks really are disgusting creatures.
 
Joan Crawford said:
And he also tripped over some nematodes too.
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Yeah, nematodes get around. I think I read somewhere a while back they've been found on a space shuttle after returning to Earth. They are widely dismissed as being a meaningful factor in TBD's, but...

There's a boatload of things I'd like to run more tests on, including nematodes, if only to erase that "icky" variable that creeps into the corners of my mind. Add to that, though, seeing how symptoms fare with Bb alone with treatment, and then see the effects of treatment on Bb with the Swiss Agent, aka Ricketsia Helvetica - which, if you do the math, would have been the tandem Burgdorfer found back in 1981 or whatever in Montana in his gov't office.
 
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