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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Case in point

This 30 year old patient was well until 2 months after she had noticed a tick bite on the top of her head. Then, over time, she developed a coterie of familiar symptoms: fatigue, migratory joint pains, both large and small joints, headaches, numbness and tingling, muscle pain, brain fog, memory loss, confusion, trouble recognizing objects and performing mathematical calculations, lability of mood, night sweats, numbness and tingling, itching and others.

These symptoms waxed and wanted in various proportions over a six month period before I met her several weeks ago.(During this time she had been treated by two LLMDs).

To many readers the diagnosis is not in doubt.

So what does the lab say?

Prior Western Blots performed by Labcorp found, IgM band 23 and IgG band 41 alone.

A repeat by Stony Brook found IgM bands, 18,28,41,58,72,93 and IgG bands 58,62 and 93.
Even though Stony Brook identified 6 IgM bands, no 23 band was found. However, the 93band turned up in both the IgM and IgG series.

Both the 23 and 93 bands are considered so Lyme specific that for some ppractitioners either alone can suffice to cinch the diagnosis.

Of note: other bands such as 18 also vary by lab.

This was on my desk today.
I am not promoting any specific Laboratory.

3 comments:

worriedmom said...

Have you been seeing more pneumonia like symptoms? water in or around lungs? The lyme support group discussions seem to have more like this lately. When I first started attending these groups, I never heard moms say anything about lungs, other than things like "air hunger". Just wondering if something new is out.

worriedmom said...

Science Daily article, "Lyme Disease Surge Predicted for Northeastern US: Due to Acorns and Mice, Not Mild Winter", reported observation from Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Dr. Richard Ostfeld, NY.

Link:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120316094452.htm

Rochester said...

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