New "Lyme Antigen test"

[valentinelynx]

This one seemed to me to come out of the blue? Anyway know anything about it? Thoughts on usefulness? It tests for the OspA antigen. Seems it's actually available now.

News article
Stepping up the fight against Lyme Disease
New test to improve detection in clinical phase at Northern Virginia lab
By Trevor Baratko
Loudoun Times-Mirror
at:

http://www.fairfaxtimes.com/article...ht-against-lyme-disease&template=fairfaxTimes

Company FAQ at:

http://www.ceresnano.com/#!lyme-test-faq/c22fq

I see that it is being offered through Internal Medicine of Northern Virginia, while awaiting FDA approval. This is the clinic of Samuel Shor, MD, President-Elect of ILADS. Looks like it costs $400 and is a urine test. Not sure if they are accepting shipped specimens or what. Anybody know?

 

[Mary]

@valentinelynx - Thanks for posting - this looks promising - I hope it pans out. My sister is dealing with a lot of confusion etc. re whether or not she has lyme (like thousands of others) and supposedly this test would be much more accurate. Crossing my fingers!

 

[duncan]

I have been reading about this test for quite some time, but for the life of me I cannot recall if I have read any published paper on it. I will see if I can find something.

This is appears to be an antigen test, which is likely going to have the people pulling the strings at established Lyme diagnostic boutiques in fits.

So I look at the test as a very promising addition.

A couple of caveats, without having any published paper in front of me:

First, it appears this will be, at least for now, primarily used in early or acute Lyme. This is similar to doing a biopsy on a bulls-eye rash, except no need for a biopsy; just pee. But capturing Bb antigens is notoriously more difficult to do if the disease has progressed beyond the early stage. This was one of my reservations with the ALS culture test, which brings me to the second caveat.

Second, I am assuming this has been validated. But I cannot recall. It will need to be, if it has not. Regardless, rest assured that it likely will come under fire from the powers that be - more or less the same types that attacked the ALS test.

Third, I was wondering why I have seen attacks recently about Igenex' 31kDa testing, suggesting that there is some cross-reactivity involved. OspA is specific to Borrelia, and lots of vaccine efforts revolve in part around it for this reason. Still, the risk of cross-reactivity has been brought up by some. I don't know if there is any merit to those claims, nor do I know if this potential problem is resolved by the fact we are looking at an antigen test vs. an antibody test. But it looks like a good test to me.

I think this test has a lot of potential, if only because it is a direct antigen test. If so, I hope they find a way to amplify it somehow to be able to employ it for late stage Lyme patients as well.