Re; "Unproved Lyme Disease Tests Prompt Warnings"
By Dan Hurley and Marc Santora

September 12 , 2005
 

West Coast residents should be alerted that commonly used Lyme tests promoted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are unreliable at best and even less reliable for West Coast Lyme disease.

The article fails to mention that in the test recommended for screening, CDC testing detected Lyme disease in its own positive blood samples only two-thirds of the time. Furthermore, a vaccine trial by SmithKline showed that in one test recommended after a positive screen test, less than one-third of proven Lyme patients met CDC's highly restrictive criteria for surveillance purposes. Thus, under the best of circumstances, CDC-sanctioned testing would miss 80% of Lyme cases based on these studies alone.

In another study ignored by the CDC, 117 samples of suspected Lyme disease from Kaiser Permanente in northern California were sent to American Medical Laboratories in Virginia. Only one sample yielded positive results. Since the West Coast has at least 12 known strains of the Lyme bacteria and most Lyme tests are based on a single East Coast strain, false-negative results are likely.

Specialized reference laboratories such as IgeneX have been a lifesaver for many on the West Coast. Perhaps the laboratories that can't seem to find Lyme disease should be questioned as well.