Lyme Disease Pt2, Positive Negative

Hi, welcome back to Health Bunker blog.

In today’s article we are going to discuss a particular hot topic now around the world, blood testing.

We will highlight the types of testing available on the NHS for Lyme disease. We will also investigate the other available independent Lyme tests that are available.

Doctors sometimes, well ok most times write off the Lyme disease symptoms that they are presented with, making the patient feel crazy or pathetic.

It is a fact that the testing for Lyme and other diseases is not accurate to say the least. Blood testing can be a picture of that moment in time. And the same test tomorrow could throw out a totally different result.

Lyme disease is a stealth disease and the Borrelia infection, can lay in wait for an opportune moment or slowly debilitate its host over many years.

This makes it very hard to test for borrelia because of it’s hide and seek actions. Then we have the other infections or co-infections that also paly a huge part in Lyme disease.

Some of the topics we will address

What are the types of NHS Lyme tests?

Where are they carried out?

How accurate are these tests?

What are the tests looking for?

Do the NHS test of Co-infections?

Testing in the US

Independent Testing

The Widening Circle

Let us wind the clock back to 1975.

Polly Murray a mother from Lyme, Connecticut was pestering the State Department of Health. She wanted to report some unusual that were affecting her family and the community she lived in.

By then there were over 40 cases of a weird affliction that would go on to be called Lyme disease. During the 60s and 70s Polly’s family became stricken with symptoms like rashes, joint pains to fevers.

The constant calling and badgering of the State Department of Health, prompted a meeting between Polly and Dr. Allen C. Steere.

Steere was from the Department of Rheumatology at Yale University School of Medicine. He began to study the pattern arsing in the Lyme area. Steere wrote the first medical paper that he described as Lyme Arthritis. (1)

Mrs Murray wrote a book about her life campaigning for Lyme disease called;

The Widening Circle, A Lyme Disease Pioneer Tells Her story 1996

Polly passed away in July 2019 from Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s has been linked to Lyme and is especially common in women who have Lyme. (2)

 On a side note.

In the UK there are over 850,000 people with Alzheimer’s disease., which represents 1 in 14 over the age of 65. By 2051 that is estimated to increase to over 2 million, costing the NHS £37.7bn for care alone. (3)

In the US 5.5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease and by 2050 that could be as high as 16 million at current growth rates, costing $162bn in care. (4)

I would hazard a guess that very few if any have been tested for Lyme borreliosis. This subject and other linked diseases warrant a more in depth look at some point.

Lyme tests

Getting tested for Lyme Disease and Co-Infections here in the UK is an absolute nightmare. Most doctors do not want to test for Borrelia in the first place.

It could take someone years to eventually get tested for Lyme. I have heard of patients who got an independent test, they then took the positive results into an appointment.

Only for their Dr to tell them not to bother taking the test papers out, because the Dr would not look at it or recognise the results just because it was not an NHS test.

There are also strains of Lyme disease that are not detected by current testing. A negative test result cannot rule out a patient having Lyme disease.

In parts of the US it is law for doctors to have a clinical approach, and not just rely on unreliable test results. These doctors look at the symptom list as well as the results of testing.

In recent papers from more than 70 independent studies of Lyme tests, they showed alarming results. What they showed were that when testing was done soon after a tick bite, they only identify 20% of the cases (80% are misdiagnosed). (5)

So imagine if you had chronic Lyme.

Department of Health Review 2017

The findings in this 2017 review revealed that.

Lab tests for Lyme disease had ‘significant limitations’ relating to the accuracy of the tests, the timing of tests, a lack of consistency in interpretation of test results and the expense and time associated with conducting tests.(6)

And that patients.

Had a difficult journey to obtaining a diagnosis and treatment.

Ambivalence or scepticism from clinicians.

Negative practical consequences such as personal financial burden and costs to society.

Negative emotional consequences for themselves and their families.

Needing to inform themselves about Lyme disease in order to challenge clinicians who contested the validity of their symptoms.

I would say these are an understatement. What has happened since this review was published?

What tests do the NHS offer?

As I have been pointing out, Lyme disease testing is very controversial. NHS testing is flawed and believe it or not a single exists to show patients that the infection has been treated or cured effectively.

Independent lab testing is better but still not anywhere near accurate, even though they claim to be more accurate than the NHS tests available. Even if the independent test results show a positive the NHS will not recognise the results.

This leaves patients in a tricky situation to say the least.

What are the available Lyme tests on the NHS?

If you have an EM rash there should be no need for testing treatment should start straight away. Initial NHS testing method for Lyme is the ELISA test, done at local hospitals. A negative ELISA cannot rule out Lyme disease, because it can take up to a month for antibodies to show up in blood.

(ELISA stands for enzyme-linked immunoassay, it is used to test for anti-bodies in the blood. Antibodies are proteins that are produced by our immune system when antigens (harmful substances) are present).(13)

What happens next is a travesty, many people who have a negative ELISA test are then treated as though they do not have Lyme even before antibodies have a chance to form.

If you are immunosuppressant you may never have the antibodies, anyway, making the ELISA test inconsequential in the first place.

If you’re fortunate and get a positive result from the ELISA, the sample will then be sent to Porton Down’s Rare and Imported Pathogens Laboratory (RIPL) (7) or the NHS Highland National Lyme Borreliosis Testing Laboratory at Raigmore Hospital in Scotland. (8)(9)

This blood test is called the Western Blot or Immunoblot test. Many Drs in the NHS do not realise that Lyme disease can behave very differently to other diseases. (10)

Antibodies responses are upside down making test translation difficult, for example in normal circumstances, IgM shows an acute infection and IgG shows traces of past infection. In the case of Lyme disease this can be totally skewed.

Which labs in the UK do they take place?

Porton Down’s Rare and Imported Pathogens Laboratory (RIPL) specialises in (13):

‘diagnosis and management of unusual or hazardous infectious diseases present in the UK or imported into the country’

This lab is situated in 7000 acres of Wiltshire countryside Porton Down is a Levels 3 (CL3) and 4 (CL4) laboratories. Which means it can play about with some tasty stuff.

RIPL provides medical and laboratory specialist services to the NHS and other healthcare providers and can also:

• accept requests from internationally accredited health service providers
• handle forensic samples
• test samples for a range of pathogens from potentially contaminated sites including anthrax from construction sites; for information about environmental testing, contact RIPL

So, let us get this straight, the testing for Lyme disease is operated by a government agency laboratory, synonymous with biological warfare manufacture, and the testing of bacteria and other diseases on humans and lab animals, and the test results are at best 50% accurate.

Porton Down has a chequered past, it is a biowarfare weapon facilities and has been used to test harmful agents on British soldiers and public. I am going to go into greater detail about this facility in another article.

I’m smelling a lab rat here people. (12)

Here is The inventor of the PCR test himself Prof. Kary Mullis.

Below are my lab tests, these were done by BCA Labs from Germany. Unseen are my initial Borrelia -IgG ELISA Blot test was negative, but my IgM ELISA showed borderline.

So, they did a revised test which showed activity against Borrelia, 4+ being possible infection. I scored 11 & 9. My immunity was also shot to pieces, with my Natural Killer Cells (NK) Heparin very low at 3%, the range is 2-70%. And my NK-Cells Absolute measured 55 from a range of 130-360.

Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, Chlamydia pneumoniae, Epstein-Barr-Virus had all been detected as well as possible Coxackie Virus.

Nic (my wife) did pay for Bartonella and she tested positive. I did not pay to test for Babesia, Bartonella, Mycoplasma, or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (RMSF). I am sure I would have tested positive for some of these co-infections. (11)

I am going to go into the symptoms of these co-infections in the next Lyme article.

Please keep in mind from 2006-2009 I went through the NHS system having test after test. Not one specialist ever mentioned Lyme or any of the other exotic infections. In fact, they said it may be a mental issue, and prescribed anti-depressants.

I threw the prescription in the bin and didn’t go back that was 2009. There and then I started my learning and research odyssey.

My BCA Labs Lyme Test & Results (With Some Example Co-Infections)

Health Bunker

As I hope I’ve shown in this brief article that Lyme disease and their co-infections are often ignored by the NHS. Especially chronic cases. The tests are inadequate, there are no follow ups to assess if infections have gone and nor is there any alternative treatments other than antibiotics. What happens when (not if) they fail?

Also, the disease or infection/s are extremely difficult to detect. Far too much reliance is put on inaccurate testing by doctors who require more training in this area and more help from government and the medical establishments.

To top it off testing laboratories might be the very places some of these weird and wonderful infections came from in the first place. Which has many conflicts of interest involved relating to biowarfare and official secrets.

In the next Lyme article we will explore some of the co-infections.

Eat Well. Be Well.

Health Bunker

It’s Your Life. Own it!

*Disclaimer – Please note, we are not Doctors or trained medical professionals. We are not giving medical advice. Check with your Doctor or health practitioner before trying anything.

References and Sources of Information;

1. https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2019/07/24/lyme-heroine-polly-murray-dies/
2. https://globallymealliance.org/pathogen-cause-alzheimers-disease/
3. https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-us/policy-and-influencing/dementia-uk-report
4. https://globallymealliance.org/pathogen-cause-alzheimers-disease/
5. https://lymediseaseuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/How-accurate-are-the-tests-for-Lyme-disease-Rev.pdf
6. http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/CMS/Portals/0/PDF%20reviews%20and%20summaries/Lyme%20disease%20stakeholder%20experiences%202017%20Brunton.V2.pdf
7. https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/rare-and-imported-pathogens-laboratory-ripl
8. https://www.nhshighland.scot.nhs.uk/News/Pages/Researchprojectintotick-bornediseases.aspx
9. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng95/chapter/recommendations#diagnosis
10. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2012/719821/
11. https://healthbunker.co.uk/healing-lyme-disease-co-infections/
12. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/10_october/18/inside_out_west.shtml

http://www.viramed.de/images/stories/pdf/Arbeitsanleitungen_EN/2551_Borrelia_ViraStripe_IgM_AL_en.pdf

https://www.thebiomedicalscientist.net/science/my-lab-rare-and-imported-pathogens#:~:text=The%20Rare%20and%20Imported%20Pathogens,Coxiella%20burnetii%20and%20Bacillus%20anthracis.

https://www.aafp.org/afp/2011/1115/p1176.html

https://www.lymeresourcecentre.com/prof

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/718980/LymeDisease_SignsAndSymptoms_requested_changes_June_2018_final_Clean.pdf

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Lyme-disease/

https://www.pyramidtravelproducts.co.uk/how-to-guides/insect-repellents/lyme-disease-test-kit/