BacteriologyStudies that report unexpected positive blood cultures for Lyme borrelia – are they valid?
Section snippets
Funding
This publication was made possible in part by support from CTSA Grant Number UL1 TR001863 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to EDS. The work was also supported by the Slovenian Research Agency (grant number P3–0296, given to FS). The findings and conclusions of this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the NIH.
Disclosures
Dr. Wormser reports receiving research grants from Immunetics, Inc., Institute for Systems Biology, Rarecyte, Inc., and Quidel Corporation. He owns equity in Abbott; has been an expert witness in malpractice cases involving Lyme disease; and is an unpaid board member of the American Lyme Disease Foundation. Dr. Shapiro has received royalty payments from UptoDate; has been an expert witness in malpractice cases involving Lyme disease; and is an unpaid board member of the American Lyme Disease
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Dr. Barbara Johnson, Julia Singer, Sophia Less, Artemio Zavala and Lisa Giarratano for their assistance.
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Persistent Symptoms After Treatment of Lyme Disease
2022, Infectious Disease Clinics of North AmericaCitation Excerpt :A study found that 57.5% of healthy controls could be interpreted as positive using the in-house criteria of a Lyme specialty laboratory.4 Culture assays claiming high positivity have raised serious concerns5,6 and could not be replicated.7 A urine antigen assay had false-positive results and the same sample varied from negative to highly positive when testing 5 fractions from each of 10 negative control samples.8
Critical analysis of a doxycycline treatment trial of rhesus macaques infected with Borrelia burgdorferi
2018, Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious DiseaseCitation Excerpt :In other studies, in vitro cultures have been successful irrespective of whether the cells of B. burgdorferi originated in a human (Wormser et al., 2006), in an animal (Barthold et al., 1993; Hodzic et al., 2008; Moody and Barthold, 1998), or in a tick (Dolan et al., 2008; Hodzic et al., 2008). Of course, like with PCR (especially nested PCRs) and IFA testing, false-positive in vitro cultures have been reported (Fallon et al., 2008; Wormser et al., 2017). The results of the study reviewed here and that of other studies are, however, consistent with persistence of spirochetal remnants (Bockenstedt et al., 2012; Wormser et al., 2012a).
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