Is there any cost effective way to do Lyme test?

Posted by Steve Harrington on March 9th, 2020

A novel test for a new type of Lyme disease has been identified in a study published in the prestigious Healthcare medical journal (Basel)). The latest test detects exposure to tick-borne relapsing fever, a Lyme-related disease transmitted worldwide by ticks.

Borrelia burgdorferi, a type of corkscrew-shaped bacteria known as a spirochet, is a tick-borne infection. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently announced that Lyme disease is much more severe than previously thought, with more than 400,000 new cases being diagnosed in the United States each year. This makes about four times more severe annual new cases of Lyme disease in this country than new cases of HIV / AIDS, tuberculosis and syphilis combined.

IGeneX, California, published broad-based antibody coverage (BCA) Lyme disease assays and tick-borne relapsing fever (TBRF) studies. The BCA assays are simple and cost-effective tests which offer either positive or negative results for Borrelia spp exposure.

This is crucial to be able to test independently for each borreliosis disease, since other bacteria in the Borreliae community that cause symptoms similar to Lyme, but the treatments may be different.

IgM and IgG ImmunoBlot IGeneX Lyme tests have long been recognized as the gold standard for Lyme disease and TBRF treatment, but they have been too costly for some patients. The new BCA assays from the company are more affordable, which will help more patients get testing of good quality.

"They are excited to deliver these tests at a price that will make them available to patients from different socio-economic backgrounds," says Jyotsna Shah, MD, IGeneX president and director of laboratory.

The Lyme disease and TBRF assays are designed to detect antibodies for multiple species and strains of Borreliae that cause Lyme disease and TBRF in human serum, respectively. Growing assay has outstanding specificity. A positive test result indicates exposure to either the Lyme group or the TBRF Borreliae group, and should be used when making a diagnosis in combination with patient clinical symptoms and history. BCA Lyme disease and assays with TBRF provide many benefits:

1. All IgG and IgM antibodies are detected.

2. These are much wider and more inclusive than typical serologies of the genus Borrelia.

3. They detect antibodies from Australia, Europe and North America to the Borrelia species and strains.

4. These are better than enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) of two levels and better than ELISA/Western blot studies of two levels.

They provide a quick, cost-effective, easy to understand positive or negative outcome.

BCA assays limit they are less sensitive than ImmunoBlots. They don't provide specifics about the disease stage, either. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that Lyme disease is more severe than previously thought, with more than 400,000 cases diagnosed annually in the USA. The agency’s recalculation means that the number of new cases of Lyme disease diagnosed annually in the United States is about four times greater than the annual number of new cases of HIV/AIDS, syphilis, and tuberculosis combined.

Recently, Borrelia has been recognized in the United States and internationally as another type of tick-borne disease caused by relapse of fever. Until now, this family of Borrelia spirochetes has had no reliable test for exposure. The new study describes a responsive and precise test called an IGeneX Laboratory-developed line immunoblot, which detects antibodies against Borrelia relapsing fever. IGeneX had previously developed an immunoblot line test for Borrelia burgdorferi associated Lyme spirochetes exposure

These BCA assays yield either a positive or negative result for exposure to Borreliae, according to the press release issued by IGengeX press release.

Testing for each Borreliosis disorder is important because the TBRF Borreliae community may also cause Lyme-like symptoms, and the treatments may be different, as per IGengeX Lyme test.