IgM and IgG Western Blot for Lyme

[Dakota Hamill]

Anyone ever done any Lyme disease related testing on themselves?  I've found PCR primers for Borrelia but IgM and IgG seem to be a more trusted test outside of an ELISA specific to Borrelia. 

Rather curious.  I've had the bullseye rash 3 times, doctors only treated with doxycycline 1 time, and all ticks removed in under 24 hours (which "they" say means Borrelia cannot be transferred).   Doctors also always refused to do a lab test as they said the rash was confirmation for needing antibiotics. 

There's still a lot of debate about chronic lyme and false positives with tests but, not here to voice opinion on that, mainly interested in doing my first Western. 

[Ravasz]

Hi,

So I briefly looked into this today, and found that western blot is not the recommended diagnostic tool for Lyme. Its mostly used as a confirmation if other tests (mostly an ELISA) are positive to rule out false positives. It is mainly looking at a messy blot with no standard interpretation. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250769/

It does not seem like a good idea for me to do this as firstly the results will show some bands either way, and secondly, it has a lot of variability even between labs, so there is no standard interpretation. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/57/3/341/460648

Since its a difficult, messy blot it is probably not a good choice for a first western blot either. There are easier, cleaner things to blot for, like tubulin or histones. Those are much better targets for a first blot if you are not familiar with the technique yet.

Also of note, health and safety rules in almost any lab will forbid researchers to perform any testing on their own samples. Reason being that if the sample gets contaminated during handling, then the contamination has successfully attacked the tissue of the researcher in the dish, and is likely able to infect the person as well. Because of this you should never be allowed to handle your own samples. In our lab we perform experiments with human samples, including sometimes each others, so there is a rota system in place to avoid any researcher meeting their own tissue in culture.

Cheers,

Mate

[Jonathan Cline]

"Doctors also always refused to do a lab test"

What they are actually doing is refusing to _pay_ for a lab test (they don't want to support paying for it or billing anyone else for it).  They can't refuse to examine the results if you pay "cash" and have the copy sent to them.  So if you really want to address something with a test, then first you can insist that you want a test done on your own dime (and you unravel the nightmare of dealing with insurance on the phone), or you can insist they give you the name of a lab which you can use to get the test done yourself and then you do that legwork.   They might insist that the test results might take too long and you need antibiotics right away (both which may or may not be true) yet you can also tell them you're refusing their treatment because they don't have enough information to make a fully informed diagnosis and walk out.   

I view the current situation of antagonistic-doctors as ridiculous, because if a consumer is willing to pay, then they should be offered the resources to do so, which increases the specificity of their own treatment, and doctors shouldn't stand in the way; yet they do, and thus prevent consumers from acting in their own best interests.

If you really want to see a doctor stammer platitudes about their choice of treatment, state that you require them to check your genomic sequence data for statistical likelihoods before they make a proper diagnosis.

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## Jonathan Cline

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