digital dog
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Daily mail online piece about Lyme for anyone interested.
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I wonder what the validation on this test is like.
I see he is doubting the validity of armin tests now on noseybook.
Note on the sensitivity and the specificity of medical tests for infections
Sensitivity = percentage of infected people who on testing get a (correct) positive result.
Thus higher sensitivity means fewer false negative results.
If the sensitivity of a Borrelia test were 90%, for example, that means that when people who actually have Borrelia are tested, 90% of them will be correctly diagnosed as positive for Borrelia, but 10% will be incorrectly diagnosed as negative for Borrelia (false negative), even though they in fact have the infection.
Specificity = percentage of uninfected people who on testing get a (correct) negative result.
Thus higher specificity fewer false positive results.
If the specificity of a Borrelia test were 90%, for example, that means that when people who actually do not have Borrelia are tested, 90% of them will be correctly diagnosed as negative for Borrelia, but 10% will be incorrectly diagnosed as positive for Borrelia (false positive), even though they do not have the infection.
Not that its important but I tested negative on the Infectolab LTT (Armin's old lab) but positive on Igenex WB for Lyme....
In terms of false positives in Lyme testing, my understanding is that the ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) test for Borrelia, can return false positives if there is an acute infection with viruses such as EBV, cytomegalovirus, varicella, herpes simplex virus II, and other microbial infections like Helicobacter pylori.
The ELISA test for Borrelia also can return false positives in patients who have the autoimmune diseases of lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.
To try to account for the possibility of these false positives, I understand that when ELISA is positive, CDC recommend a western blot (immunoblot) test for Borrelia as well, because this has a very low rate of false positives (having 99% specificity, western blot returns a false positive only in 1% of cases).
Under CDC recommendations, using this two-tier testing (ELISA + western blot), a patient is only considered Lyme positive if both the ELISA test and western blot test come out positive.
So that is how the CDC do it. But does anyone know how ArminLabs in Germany, who John Caudwell used to get his family tested, go about Lyme testing? Do they also use a two-tier testing system?
For Borrelia testing, ArminLabs have:
• LTT EliSpot test (sensitivity = 84%, specificity = 94%)
• Immunoblot test (SeraSpot) (sensitivity = 60%, specificity = 99%)
• Borrelia PCR
• NK cell activity
Do ArminLabs also use two-tier testing (perhaps the LTT EliSpot + immunoblot) to test for Lyme, does anyone know? Or perhaps used all 4 of the above tests combined in a probabilistic algorithm to create a more accurate test result?
I am just wondering what sort of testing John Caudwell's family may have had at ArminLabs, which showed that 11 family members were Lyme positive.
Hi hip.
I sent you my lyme test from armin.
Maybe you could enlighten us when you see it.