Mixed Strains Improve Lyme WB Sensitivity

With the deadline looming for FDA to make a decision on its testing guidance, which would bring Laboratory Developed Tests from specialty labs including those for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases under the auspices of FDA, a new peer reviewed study “Improved Sensitivity of Lyme disease Western Blots Prepared with a Mixture of Borrelia Burgdorferi Strains 297 and B31″ was published in the peer reviewed journal Chronic Diseases International on Dec 10, 2014 with lead author JS Shah, IGeneX Inc.

According to the study, the researchers concluded “that the use of the two-strain IgG and IgM WB and in-house interpretation criteria significantly increased the combined sensitivity of the test without significant loss of specificity. In patients with indeterminate WB results, a confirmation test with recombinant OspA is recommended.”

Click here to read the journal article