The more chronic the problems are, the less likely it is that antibodies and an immune response will be detected.
A shocking statistic: around 70% of people who have been bitten by a tick do not develop a Lyme rash. Only 30% of those affected have a rash – they are fortunate in that they are at least faced with the facts.
“The greatest difficulty in diagnosis is the laboratory background, as ELISA tests can only help in 30-50 per cent of cases, in other words, they do not help in more than 50 per cent of cases!” explains Dr. Erik Kolbenheyer, an internist, gastroenterologist, family doctor, occupational health specialist, and doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, who has become thoroughly familiar with Lyme borreliosis due to his involvement with the disease. As he says, the ELISA test, which has poor sensitivity and accuracy, must be used first in the current procedure, so doctors should not stop there if they have clinical suspicions. There is no 100% accurate test, he points out, and then explains why he recommends further investigation:
“It is important to remember that routine laboratory tests do not detect the pathogen itself, but rather look for the immune response triggered in the human body. Success depends on two things: the methodology used and the fact that the more chronic the problems are, the less likely we are to detect antibodies or an adequate immune response. This is partly because the immune system is exhausted and partly because the pathogen and the antibody create a so-called immune complex, which traps these antibodies, making them undetectable in the blood.”
The ELISA test is an indirect test, as is the Western blot or immunoblot, which is a more specialised test: it has greater sensitivity, but there is also a “blind spot” here. Basically, these are the two routine tests that are available on a daily basis.
However, there is also a new type of test, the lymphocyte transformation test, which can be performed earlier than the above serological tests. This lymphocyte test was first used in Germany. According to some literature data, it allows early detection even with a very low pathogen count, but it is not yet part of general diagnostics.
In the case of direct testing, the pathogen is sought, which includes the dark field examination performed by research physician Dr. Béla Pál Bózsik. During the blood test with a microscope, the pathogens can be found directly: a special nutrient solution helps the pathogens to survive, which is very important for their detection and study, and the method also includes a concentration procedure. In other words, the number of pathogens in the sample can be increased, thereby significantly improving their detectability. Erik Kolbenheyer first encountered this method when Béla Pál Bózsik examined his blood sample. It was a strange feeling to see the moving spirochetes under the microscope, he said, but at the same time it was somewhat reassuring, as it finally confirmed his suspicion that he had Lyme borreliosis.
Dark field microscopy is not fundamentally new, as it was regularly used to detect syphilis after the Second World War. However, with the development of laboratory diagnostics, this method has been pushed into the background.
Until Lyme disease can be found and confirmed in patients, they may be considered psychosomatic patients, even though they are not. An accurate description of symptoms, such as the Horowitz questionnaire, is very helpful to doctors in describing symptoms.
Source: weborvos.hu
