Why Lyme Is Called the “Great Imitator” #shorts

So it's about 50% sensitive on a good day. I think another issue, strangely, and this is kind of coming out of left field, but I think another issue is our approach to Lyme prophylaxis. So we know that if we give somebody 200 milligrams of doxycycline when they've been bitten by a tick, they can seroconvert. They can become seronegative for antibodies. So once you've kind of prophylaxed somebody for Lyme, their test may be negative as a result, which is very confusing. I think another issue with the testing is A lot of times tick-borne illnesses don't live in the blood. So, you know, Bartonella lives in the skin, Lyme likes to burrow in tissue, and so you may not find in a blood sample, you may not find evidence of tick-borne infection even though the person is clearly infected. So there are just a lot of layers to that issue.