Archive for the ‘Testing’ Category

Theranos Founder Convicted of Fraud While Our Own Government Goes ‘Scot-Free’

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/theranos-founder-elizabeth-holmes-convicted-of-fraud-

Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Convicted of Fraud

After a week of deliberation, a jury returned a guilty verdict on four charges related to wire fraud, each of which carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Amanda Heidt
Jan 4, 2022

Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of the blood testing company Theranos, was found guilty yesterday (January 3) of fraud, the latest development in a headline-grabbing saga that has spanned nearly two decades and been the subject of a book, a podcast, and a documentary. Her trial, held over almost four months in San Jose, California, was seen as a referendum on Silicon Valley’s “fake it till you make it” ethos, as prosecutors alleged that Holmes solicited almost $1 billion from investors by touting a device that never lived up to the company’s claims. 

Of the 11 charges Holmes was facing at trial, she was found guilty of four: three counts of wire fraud and one of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. (See link for article)

___________________

Summary:

  • Holmes was given legitimacy and leverage to solicit capital due to a packed board of powerful figures including former secretaries of defense, former secretaries of state, and a former director for the CDC.
  • The device, first named the Edison but later called the miniLab, was touted as being able to run hundreds of tests on-site at each Walgreens location, but could in fact run only a few which often gave poor results.
  • Researchers and technicians testified of lax safety protocols including the mishandling of blood products.

PCR COVID-19 False Positives Will Continue in 2022 – Unless We Act Now

No, CDC Has Not Abandoned PCR Tests. What You Can Do About It
, 2022

CDC’s new advice for COVID-19 testing is “keep testing for Omicron if you’re negative”. And in spite of rumors, that still includes PCR testing.

This will come as a shock to people who thought CDC was abandoning PCR testing altogether. A careful read of communications from CDC, however, told me that CDC was only abandoning their own specific PCR test kit.

Now that Fauci has admitted that many children are hospitalized with COVID instead of from COVID, the public must understand that the same has been true all along with PCR testing in adults, too – not just for hospitalization, but also total numbers of cases and deaths attributed to COVID-19.

Now, the brainiacs at CDC say that if you’re sick, test “for Omicron” with antigen tests (that are not specific for Omicron SARS-CoV-2), and, if necessary, get a PCR test done. (See article at desert.com).

This means PCR-based false positives will continue.

Still Hiding Ct Values

The general public is still not allowed to know a critical datapoint for their own PCR tests. Even if hospitalized, doctors deny patients and their families of the cycle threshold. Are Ct threshold values in use still different for the vaccinated and unvaccinated, leading to larger numbers of cases and deaths in the vaccinated? No evidence suggests otherwise. Are Ct threshold values in use still as high as 35? 40? Thresholds this high, according to my colleague Dr. Sin Han Lee, will lead to as high as 90% false positives (the percentage of PCR positive cases that don’t have anything to do with COVID-19).

We have reviewed this problem is podcasts, in peer-reviewed literature, in testimony in court-cases.

Yet the juggernaut continues.

In 2021, Dr. Lee and I and other colleagues created the NAATEC Consortium to sequence clinical samples to determine precisely how many PCR-positive cases might not have SAR-CoV-2 virus at all. Dr. Lee’s laboratory is located in Millford, CT. Our research has IRB approval (Institutional Review Board approval). That’s a huge accomplishment!

IPAK has received a proposal from Dr. Lee to conduct a study on 100-200 patients. Dr. Lee says,

“Right now these quick antigen home-tests are producing an unknown numbers of false positives and false negatives. It is a chaos. I know there are non-Covid viruses circulating, but they are probably all labeled as Covid or Omicron.

We need 100-200 well documented real-life cases, which have been tested positive by RT-qPCR, for publication. Every case must be supported by Sanger sequencing.”

What he means is that every diagnosis of COVID-19 should be confirmed via examination of the nucleotide sequence of the virus. Not the entire genome, just enough to know what has been amplified by the PCR machine.

Patients deserve an accurate diagnosis. And this is not a competitive move by Dr. Lee to own mass testing: every hospital can do their own Sanger sequencing.

Our Goal

We need $150,000 for this study. We tried in 2021, but only could reach 10% of our funding goal. This is where you can help.

Please help us end the tyranny of the false positive diagnoses that led to lockdowns, lost jobs, permanent business closures, and misdiagnoses of other respiratory ailments by visiting The NAATEC Consortium web page and making a one-time donation.

We’re hoping my substack community will be the answer. If everyone pitched in $20 right now, we’ll be able to start sequencing in 2022 – and shut down the madness that has been ruling our lives for two years.

If you can’t donate, perhaps you could pitch in for the general operations at IPAK via a small monthly donation to IPAK? Either way, please share this article with everyone via social media!

The truth shall set you free.

Fund objective research in 2022!

____________________

**Comment**

I’ve posted numerous articles about Dr. Sin Hang Lee who has been outspoken about faulty testing and lack of vaccine safety.  Similarly to Lyme/MSIDS, the only way we will move forward is to fund projects like these where independent research is done that isn’t funded by Big Pharma or the government.

For more:

Category:

Activism, Testing

Bartonella hensaelae Native Valve Endocarditis Presenting With Crescentic Glomerulonephritis

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221425092100322X

A case of Bartonella henselae native valve endocarditis presenting with crescentic glomerulonephritis

Received 8 June 2021, Revised 29 November 2021, Accepted 15 December 2021, Available online 16 December 2021.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.idcr.2021.e01366Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Abstract

Bartonella endocarditis is often an elusive diagnosis, usually derived from evaluating multiple laboratory tests and assessment of presenting symptoms. Herein we describe a case of Bartonella henselae native mitral valve endocarditis with an initial presentation of volume overload and renal failure. The Bartonella organism is tedious to isolate from culture medium, causing most diagnoses to be delayed. Due to the destructive nature of B. henselae endocarditis, the need for rapid identification remains prudent. This therefore creates an opportunity for Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) to be used. We further summarize the varied presentations that may be associated with B. henselae endocarditis, and hope that this will heighten the clinicians’ awareness of this entity when presented with acute onset renal failure and culture negative vegetations.

For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2016/01/03/bartonella-treatment/

Category:

Bartonella, research, Testing

A Test to Find Many Infections at Once On Horizon

https://www.lymedisease.org/multiplex-test-on-horizon/

LYME SCI: A test to find many infections at once is on the horizon

Dec. 13, 2021

By Lonnie Marcum

What if you had access to a single test that could detect 3 different kinds of vector-borne bacteria all at the same time?  Well, it looks like researchers out of North Carolina State University and Galaxy Labs have done just that.

Research led by Ricardo Maggi, Ed Breitschwerdt, and colleagues has led to the development of a new test utilizing a multiplex droplet digital PCR “BBB ddPCR” that can simultaneously detect the three B’s—Babesia, Bartonella and Borrelia from both the Lyme and relapsing fever complex. (Maggi et al., 2021)

Once this combined test is clinically validated and available for clinical use, it will lead to improved diagnostics for patients with Lyme and other vector-borne diseases.

Humans and animals are greatly affected by tick-borne diseases. Currently, 75% of all vector-borne disease cases reported in the U.S. are caused by ticks. And 82% of the tick-borne cases are due to Lyme disease. (Rosenberg et al., 2018)

“Standard” tests fall short

Despite recent advancements for diagnostic testing for other illnesses, the CDC continues to recommend tests for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases that were designed more than three decades ago—and fall way short of what’s needed.

For example, the CDC-endorsed two-tier test for Lyme disease predates a full understanding of the immune response to Lyme disease. It has several technical limitations, including the inability to differentiate between active infection, past infection, and reinfection. (Branda et al., 2018; Schutzer et al., 2019)

The standard test combination also misses 89% of early infection (false-negatives), cannot detect all strains of disease-causing Borrelia, and suffers from cross-reactivity with other infectious diseases leading to false-positives. (Steere et al., 2008; Cook, Puri, 2016)

“The ability to co-amplify multiple vector-borne pathogens within a single sample with high sensitivity will greatly enhance the efficiency and efficacy of clinical diagnostic testing, particularly of volume-limited or otherwise hard to obtain sample matrices,” the authors state.

New approaches needed

New diagnostic approaches have been effectively applied to diseases such as Zika. And COVID-19, a disease discovered less than two years ago, already has better diagnostic tools available to it than tick-borne infections identified nearly a century ago.

Importantly, serology testing for COVID was deemed unreliable and unsuitable for diagnosis, yet serology remains the diagnostic standard of care for tick-borne diseases. (Serology tests look for antibodies in blood serum.)

All tick-borne diseases face major hurdles that prevent accurate early diagnosis and treatment. Serology as a diagnostic standard of care is problematic for all infections, but is especially problematic for immune-evasive, low-abundance infections.

Microbial testing techniques

Commonly used diagnostic techniques for tick-borne diseases include both direct and indirect detection methods, though some are only used in research studies. Both direct and indirect diagnostic methods are prone to false-negative and false-positive results.

For this reason, many experienced Lyme and tick-borne disease practitioners will recommend a combination of both direct and indirect tests, or a series of tests to confirm a diagnosis.

  • Direct detection methods directly confirm the presence of a pathogen. Direct methods for tick-borne diseases include: growing the pathogen in culture; microscopic examination of blood or tissue; polymerase chain reaction (PCR) which detects the DNA of one pathogen; quantitative PCR (qPCR) detects the quantity of a pathogen; multiplex PCR detects DNA of more than one pathogen; and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) “maps” the genetic material in cells.
  • Indirect detection  methods detect the host immune system’s response to infection, providing indirect evidence of infection. Indirect  methods are able to determine if there has been recent or prior exposure to a pathogen. These methods, however, cannot confirm if an infection is active, nor whether it has been cleared. The most frequently used indirect serologic tests for tick-borne diseases include ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay); IFA (immunofluorenscence antibody test); immunoblots like the Western blot; enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT); and lymphocyte transformation tests (LTTs). (Springer et al., 2021)

Looking for antibodies

Both direct and indirect detection techniques have their strengths and weaknesses. For example, the most common tests for Lyme disease, the ELISA and Western blot, both  look for antibodies generated as the immune system tries to fight the infection.

Immunocompromised patients who do not mount a proper immune response, or those who receive early treatment may not develop detectable antibodies.

In addition, intracellular, low-yield and stealth pathogens like Borrelia and Bartonella are notoriously difficult to find by direct detection techniques like PCR.

The main reason for this is that little DNA from “low abundance” pathogens is found in blood. If there’s not enough DNA in the blood sample, standard PCR  cannot detect it.

Because of this, blood has not been the preferred sample type for detecting Borrelia burgdorferi DNA by PCR. However, PCR has had more success detecting the relapsing fever species of Borrelia, due to the higher levels of spirochetes in the blood. Conventional PCR, however, can be useful for the detection of Borrelia DNA from skin biopsies of Lyme-associated rashes, the fluid or tissue from joints (synovial fluid and synovium.)

The new approach

The research team, led by Dr. Ricardo Maggi and Dr. Ed Breitschwerdt at NCSU and Dr. Jennifer Miller at Galaxy Diagnostics, based their new multiplex droplet digital PCR assay “BBB ddPCR” on a wealth of knowledge they’ve gained from developing better diagnostics for Bartonella.

They recently published a paper explaining how their “BAPGM enrichment” along with the ddPCR improves upon the standard qPCR for Bartonella. (Maggi et al., 2020)

The proprietary BAPGM™ liquid culture increases the number of bacteria in a blood sample, allowing easier detection by PCR. With the “ddPCR, instead of running one PCR on one sample, the extracted DNA gets generated into 10,000-20,000 droplets. We then run a PCR reaction on each droplet,” explains Amanda Elam, PhD. “Bartonella ddPCR alone is incredible, increasing sensitivity about 10 times over standard PCR.”

The new assay, called the “multiplex BBB ddPCR,” detected DNA from 24 species of Babesia, 31 Bartonella species, and 13 Borrelia species (from the Lyme disease, relapsing fever, and cluster of Borrelia associated with reptiles).

The assay also detected two Theileria species (T. equi and T. cervi), as well as Chlamydophila felis DNA from naturally infected animals.

The authors state, “The multiplex BBB ddPCR assay presented herein reliably detected single and co-infections involving vector-borne pathogens from the genera Babesia, Bartonella, Borrelia, and Theilaria, using a variety of animal and human clinical samples, vectors, and experimentally infected tissues and cell-lines.”

Bringing new tests to market takes time

As Amanda Elam, Phd, CEO & Co-founder of Galaxy Labs, explained during this year’s Invisible International conference, the development process for commercializing a new test, from prototype to clinical validation to FDA approval, can take 5-10 years.

Elam says it may be another two years before the multiplex BBB ddPCR test is available to the public. She anticipates the individual ddPCR tests for Bartonella, Babesia and Borrelia will be available sooner.

The researchers state they have future plans to add other vector-borne organisms such as Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, and Rickettsia species to the existing multiplex ddPCR platform. In my opinion, a single assay able to detect multiple species of the most common tick-borne diseases would have profound effects on both animal and human medicine.

Early diagnosis is critical

Patients who receive early diagnosis and prompt treatment for tick-borne diseases tend to get better. But what about the huge percentage of patients who are not diagnosed quickly? In fact, fewer than 12% of the 14,000+ patients in LymeDisease.org’s patient-led research project, MyLymeData, received a diagnosis within the first month after the tick bite. (Johnson, 2019)

A delayed diagnosis is critical to understanding why so many patients are left with debilitating symptoms after standard treatment for Lyme. (Fallon et al., 2008; Fallon et al., 2012) During the months to years that patients suffer without a diagnosis, the untreated infection spreads throughout the body, embedding itself deeply into connective tissues where standard antibiotics have a hard time reaching. (Cabello et al., 2017; Caskey, Embers, 2015; Embers et al., 2012; Gadila et al., 2021)

One study demonstrated that delaying treatment by as little as 9-19 days is predictive of persistent Lyme symptoms. (Bouquet et al., 2016) During this time, infection can spread to the organs, brain, bone marrow, and heart. (Coughlin et al., 2018; Novak et al., 2019)

Early diagnosis of tick-borne diseases can save lives. Using advanced molecular detection techniques, these researchers have shown how an improved multiplex assay can more rapidly diagnose patients infected with multiple pathogens, speeding the delivery of life saving treatment.

Here’s what we need

We currently need better diagnostic tools for all tick-borne diseases including:

  • Anaplasmosis,
  • Babesiosis (Babesia duncani, Babesia microti),
  • Borrelia miyamotoi disease,
  • Bourbon virus disease,
  • Colorado tick fever,
  • Ehrlichiosis (E. chaffeensis, E. ewingii, E. muris),
  • Heartland virus disease,
  • Lyme disease (Borrelia burgdorferi, B. mayonii)
  • Powassan virus disease,
  • Rocky Mountain spotted fever,
  • Rickettsiosis (R. parkeri, R 364D),
  • S.T.A.R.I. (Southern Tick-Associated Rash Illness)
  • Tick-borne relapsing fever (B. hermsii, B. turicatae, B. parkerii)
  • Tularemia

I’ve written about several other types of advanced diagnostics on the horizon. I look forward to seeing promising tests like these become more widely available.

LymeSci is written by Lonnie Marcum, a Licensed Physical Therapist and mother of a daughter with Lyme. She serves on a subcommittee of the federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group. Follow her on Twitter: @LonnieRhea  Email her at: lmarcum@lymedisease.org.

References

Bouquet J, et al (2016) Longitudinal Transcriptome Analysis Reveals a Sustained Differential Gene Expression Signature in Patients Treated for Acute Lyme Disease. Am Society Micro. DOI: 10.1128/mBio.00100-16

Branda JA., et al. (2018) Advances in Serodiagnostic Testing for Lyme Disease Are at Hand, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 66, Issue 7, 1 April 2018, Pages 1133–1139, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/cix943

Cabello FC, Godfrey HP, Bugrysheva JV, Newman SA. (2017) Sleeper cells: the stringent response and persistence in the Borreliella (Borrelia) burgdorferi enzootic cycle. Environ Microbiol 19(10):3846-3862, 2017. doi: 10.1111/1462-2920.13897

Caskey JR, Embers ME. (2015) Persister Development by Borrelia burgdorferi populations in vitro. Antimicrob Agents Chemother 59(10):6288-6295, 2015. DOI: 10.1128/AAC.00883-15

Cook, MJ., Puri BK. (2016) Commercial test kits for detection of Lyme borreliosis: a meta-analysis of test accuracy. Int’l J of Gen Med. DOI https://doi.org/10.2147/IJGM.S122313

Coughlin, J.M., Yang, T., Rebman, A.W. et al. (2018) Imaging glial activation in patients with post-treatment Lyme disease symptoms: a pilot study using [11C]DPA-713 PET. J Neuroinflammation 15, 346. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12974-018-1381-4

Embers ME, Barthold SW, Borda JT, Bowers L, Doyle L, Hodzic E, Jacobs MB, Hasenkampf NR, Martin DS, Narasimhan S, Phillippi-Falkenstein KM, Purcell JE, Ratterree MS, Philipp MT. (2012) Persistence of Borrelia burgdorferi in rhesus macaques following antibiotic treatment of disseminated infection. PLoS One 7(1):e29914, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029914

Fallon BA, Keilp JG, Corbera KM, Petkova E, Britton CB, Dwyer E, Slavov I, Cheng J, Dobkin J, Nelson DR, Sackeim HA. (2008) A randomized, placebo-controlled trial of repeated IV antibiotic therapy for Lyme encephalopathy. Neurology. 70(13):992-1003. doi: 10.1212/01.WNL.0000284604.61160.2d. Epub 2007 Oct 10. PMID: 17928580.

Fallon, Brian & Petkova, Eva & Keilp, John & Britton, Carolyn. (2012). A Reappraisal of the U.S. Clinical Trials of Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome. The open neurology journal. 6. 79-87. 10.2174/1874205X01206010079.

Gadila SKG, Rosoklija G, Dwork AJ, Fallon BA and Embers ME (2021) Detecting Borrelia Spirochetes: A Case Study With Validation Among Autopsy Specimens. Front. Neurol. 12:628045. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2021.628045

Johnson, Lorraine (2019): 2019 Chart Book — MyLymeData Registry. (Phase 1 April 27, 2017. Sample 3,903). figshare. Preprint. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7849244

Maggi R, Breitschwerdt EB, Qurollo B, Miller JC. Development of a Multiplex Droplet Digital PCR Assay for the Detection of Babesia, Bartonella, and Borrelia Species. Pathogens. 2021; 10(11):1462. https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens10111462

Maggi RG, Richardson T, Breitschwerdt EB, Miller JC. Development and validation of a droplet digital PCR assay for the detection and quantification of Bartonella species within human clinical samples. J Microbiol Methods. 2020 Sep;176:106022. doi: 10.1016/j.mimet.2020.106022. Epub 2020 Aug 11. PMID: 32795640.

Novak P, Felsenstein D, Mao C, Octavien NR, Zubcevik N (2019) Association of small fiber neuropathy and post treatment Lyme disease syndrome. PLoS ONE 14(2): e0212222. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212222

Rosenberg R, Lindsey NP, Fischer M, et al. (2018) Vital Signs: Trends in Reported Vectorborne Disease Cases — United States and Territories, 2004–2016. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2018;67:496–501. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6717e1

Schutzer, S.E., et al. (2019) Direct Diagnostic Tests for Lyme Disease, Clinical Infectious Diseases. 3/15, 68 (6), 1052–1057. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciy614

Springer, A., Glass, A., Probst, J. et al. Tick-borne zoonoses and commonly used diagnostic methods in human and veterinary medicine. Parasitol Res 120, 4075–4090 (2021). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-020-07033-3

Steere, A. C., McHugh, G., Damle, N., & Sikand, V. K. (2008). Prospective study of serologic tests for lyme disease. Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 47(2), 188–195. https://doi.org/10.1086/589242

Category:

Babesia, Bartonella, Lyme, research, Testing

Best Tests & Laboratory For Lyme & Coinfections

https://www.treatlyme.net/guide/best-lyme-bartonella-babesia-tests  Video Here

Best Tests & Laboratory for Lyme & Coinfections

In the video in the top link and in the following article I discuss why IGenex offers the best tests for Lyme, Bartonella, Babesia, Ehrlichia and Anaplasma versus other lab systems. IGenex has a variety of tests that it offers for each tick-borne infection. I take the guesswork out of determining which IGenex test is best – I tell you which test to get for each infection.

Watch why I prefer IGenex testing over Galaxy Labs, Vibrant Labs and DNA Connexions. In addition to what I describe in the video, I also prefer IGenex antibody tests over T cell activation tests, also called elispot tests, offered by Infectolab, Armin labs, and IGenex. T cell tests are not as accurate at finding tick borne infections as the IGenex testing techniques I recommend in the video.

Resources

Watch the video in the top link for a detailed list and test codes for the IGenex tests I recommend.

IGenex Tests I Recommend

In the video I recommend the following specific IGenex tests.

Lyme (Borrelia)

  • IGM and IGG Immunoblot – Test Code 325 and 335

Bartonella

  • IGM and IGG Immunoblot – Test Code 374 and 384

Babesia

  • B. microti IgM & IgG IFA – Test Code 200
  • B. duncani IgM & IGG IFA – Test Code 720
  • Babesia FISH – Test Code 640

Ehrlichia

  • HME (Ehrlichia chaffeensis) IgM & IgG IFA – Test Code 203

Anaplasma

  • HGA (Anaplasma phagocytophilum) IgM & IgG IFA – Test Code 206

See full profile: on LinkedIn
Follow: on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram

About the Author

Marty Ross, MD is a passionate Lyme disease educator and clinical expert. He helps Lyme sufferers and their physicians see what really works based on his review of the science and extensive real-world experience. Dr. Ross is licensed to practice medicine in Washington State (License: MD00033296) where he has treated thousands of Lyme disease patients in his Seattle practice. 

Marty Ross, MD is a graduate of Indiana University School of Medicine and Georgetown University Family Medicine Residency. He is a member of the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society (ILADS) and The Institute for Functional Medicine.

Category:

Anaplasmosis, Babesia, Bartonella, Ehrlichiosis, Testing

Lyme Disease in an African American Child With Down’s Syndrome

https://danielcameronmd.com/lyme-disease-in-an-african-american-child-with-downs-syndrome/

Lyme disease in an African American child with Down’s syndrome

Welcome to another Inside Lyme Podcast with your host Dr. Daniel Cameron. In this episode, Dr. Cameron discusses the case of a 3-year-old African American child with Down’s syndrome, developmental delays and disseminated Lyme disease.

By

“A case of disseminated Lyme disease in a child with skin of color” was published by Bax and colleagues in the journal Pediatric Dermatology.¹ The child, who had trisomy 21 (Down’s syndrome) and developmental delays, had a history of playing outside in an area where ticks were observed.

According to the authors, the young girl had experienced a high fever for 9 days and had a 5-day history of rashes. The rashes were asymptomatic and would wax and wane. They consisted of “scattered ill-defined 2-5 cm erythematous patches on the back, abdomen, and upper and lower extremities,” a pattern consistent with disseminated Lyme disease.

There were other manifestations of Lyme disease, as well. “While the patient could not verbalize pain, her mother noted that she was walking less and was not tolerating her leg braces or shoes,”  wrote the authors. “She also appeared increasingly fatigued and agitated.”

The doctors ruled out COVID-19, inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), and Incomplete Kawasaki’s syndrome.  “Incomplete Kawasaki’s syndrome was also considered given her hand/foot erythema, skin lesions, fingertip desquamation, and elevated CRP.”

Laboratory tests supported the diagnosis of Lyme disease. The child showed “significant improvement” with 14 days of amoxicillin.

Challenges raised by this case

The authors addressed the challenges in diagnosing Lyme disease in people of color, citing a study by Fix and colleagues.2

“African Americans in Borrelia burgdorferi-endemic regions have been reported to have higher rates of extracutaneous sequelae, such as arthritis, and lower rates of erythema migrans compared with Caucasians, suggesting that the characteristic rash in skin of color may go unrecognized until more severe symptoms manifest,” the authors wrote.

They did not address the challenges in diagnosing Lyme disease in people with Down’s syndrome and development delays. Fortunately, the 3-year-old toddler presented with a disseminate Lyme disease rash, symptoms, and functional problems, which led to an accurate diagnosis. This would have undoubtedly been more difficult without these findings. 

Treatment 

The authors did not discuss long-term outcomes or treatment concerns. In some cases, Lyme disease patients may have a co-infection which would require different types of treatment. For instance, amoxicillin would not be effective in treating Anaplasmosis and Babesia.

The following questions are addressed in this Podcast episode:

  1. Have you treated children with Down’s syndrome and developmental delays for Lyme disease?
  2. What were the diagnostic and treatment challenges in working with this child?
  3. Have you also treated children and adults of color? If so, what diagnostic and treatment challenges do they pose?
  4. Tell me about your experience with Lyme disease in children on the autism spectrum.

Thanks for listening to another Inside Lyme Podcast. Please remember that the advice given is general and not intended as specific advice to any particular patient. If you require specific advice, please seek that advice from an experienced professional.

Inside Lyme Podcast Series

This Inside Lyme case series will be discussed on my Facebook page and made available on podcast and YouTube.  As always, it is your likes, comments, and shares that help spread the word about this series and our work. If you can, please leave a review on iTunes or wherever else you get your podcasts.

References:
  1. Bax CE, Clark AK, Oboite M, Treat JR. A case of disseminated Lyme disease in a child with skin of color. Pediatr Dermatol. Sep 13 2021;doi:10.1111/pde.14770
  2. Fix AD, Pena CA, Strickland GT. Racial differences in reported Lyme disease incidence. Am J Epidemiol. Oct 15 2000;152(8):756-9. doi:10.1093/aje/152.8.756

Category:

Lyme, research, Testing, Treatment