Dr. Diane Mueller explains why standard Lyme tests miss infections: the ELISA test has a 67% false-negative rate, and the Western blot often overlooks other Borrelia species like B. californensis and B. miyamotoi. Conservative band-interpretation rules leave many patients told they're fine when they're actually sick.
How accurate are standard Lyme tests and why do they often come back negative? This is what we are talking about today. I'm your Lyme and mold expert, Dr. Diane Mueller. If you missed my last video about how you can have Lyme for years without knowing it and can it flare up later, I would definitely recommend going back and watching that because many times people are not even realizing that they have Lyme disease or that they should to test for Lyme disease and oftentimes doctors are not looking for it unless it is acute. So that was the last video I put out. So I would definitely recommend going back and watching that. Now for today's content, we're talking about how accurate are standard Lyme tests and why do they come back negative. So there's a couple different problems. The one is that the standard of care in conventional medicine is to start Lyme testing with what is known as the ELISA test. The ELISA test is only positive. It has a 67% chance of a false negative. So if it's positive, it is positive, but with that 67% chance of a false negative, if it's negative, it really is incredibly useless. And the problem is that this is what most doctors are doing is starting with the ELISA test and only running follow-up testing if it's positive. If the test is positive, and in many cases, in fact in most cases, the test is going to be false negative. So if you can get your doctor to order the second line of treatment or the second line of testing, it's called the Western blot. Now the Western blot has a couple problems. One, the standard Western blot that is done by most conventional doctors and by most conventional lab companies is only looking for one species of Borrelia. Borrelia burgdorferi is the species of Borrelia that causes Lyme disease. However, there are many other species of this bacteria such as Borrelia californensis, Borrelia miyamotoi, and many others that will actually cause basically the same disease, the same types of symptoms, and your standard Western blot is going to miss this if you have one of these other species of Borrelia. Another problem with the Western blot is due to the interpretation. So what the Western blot is, is a test where you're looking for proteins on the Borrelia, and you're looking really for your immune system reaction to these proteins. Now, some of these proteins are very, very Borrelia-specific, meaning to our current knowledge in medicine, Borrelia is the only microorganism that has these proteins. Others of these proteins are nonspecific to Borrelia, meaning viruses or other types of microorganisms can have these proteins. So conventionally, classically, what has been taught— and this is what's been taught since the '80s when we really started learning about Lyme disease— is that you needed to have multiple of these bands, multiple of the body's reactions to these these proteins in order for this to be Lyme. Now if you find nonspecific bands, nonspecific antibody reaction to Lyme, that makes sense, right? Because, well, if other things can cause it, you want to see that there's multiple things present, multiple of these protein reactions present in order to be specific enough to say this is Lyme disease. However, for the bands, for the protein proteins that we now know are incredibly specific to Lyme disease, if you have one of them, if you have one of them present, the classic medical doctor is going to say you are negative, which is anybody that is Lyme literate looks at this and says, this is kind of ridiculous because if nothing else can cause this, then this should just be positive if this is showing up at all. And so it's not just a problem with the test, it's also a problem with how we interpret the test. And because a lot of people are not running proper tests and they're not getting to a doctor that's Lyme literate that understands how to interpret them, many people are told that they are fine and they are not. And in the next video, we are going to go over a lot of symptoms and a lot of chronic reasons, a lot of things that are hidden from a Lyme disease perspective to make sure that you are able to identify when you should get Lyme tested and when you should get Lyme properly tested. Tested because so many times people are not even having these tests offered for them. And you really need to not only self-advocate for getting the right test, you need to self-advocate for even getting tested at all. So please do subscribe so you see when that next video comes out. And in addition to that, if you go to getwellquiz.com, you'll find that link in my show notes, you can get information onto what likely lab tests, Lyme and beyond you might be missing that you want to talk to your doctor about to ensure that you're getting the testing you need to get well again. So that's at getwellquiz.com. And again, please do subscribe so that we can get you this next information where we're talking about typical symptoms, especially like neurological ones that we see with Lyme disease and so much more. You'll find that in our next video coming out soon. We'll see you real soon.
What are typical symptoms especially neurological ones for Lyme disease HIGHRES
