Antimicrobial treatment is available and effective in most cases.Other ticks also carry diseases that may mimic Lyme disease in its early stages, and thus must be considered in the differential diagnosis before definitive testing is possible. For these patients, infection may be severe or even life-threatening. Those most likely to be affected are the elderly, the immunocompromised, those with serious comorbidities, or those without a spleen. Babesiosis Babesia microti is a protozoan parasite that infects red blood cells, causing flu-like symptoms and hemolytic anemia. Doxycycline, also effective against Lyme disease, “is the first-line treatment for adults and children of all ages and should be initiated immediately whenever anaplasmosis is suspected,” the CDC states. According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), treatment is most effective if it begins early, before lab testing can confirm the infection. These include: Anaplasmosis Anaplasma phagocytophilum is a bacterium that causes flu-like symptoms without a rash, in most cases. Similarly, when a patient tests positive but doesn’t respond completely to antibiotic treatment, co-infection may be the cause.The deer tick may carry other pathogens in addition to Borrelia, which cause their own diseases.

A Negative Lyme Test, or an Inadequate Response to Treatment, Doesn’t Mean No Tick-borne DiseaseA patient tested after the appropriate amount of time, who nonetheless receives a negative test result for Lyme disease, may be infected with another tick-borne organism. “It is important not to rush to take a sample in a newly infected patient,” says Robert Jones, MD, Medical Director for Infectious Diseases at Quest Diagnostics. Samples taken before that may give a false negative, and may need to be repeated after 30 days unless an alternative diagnosis is determined. A patient who is infected by Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, may develop symptoms within days, but may not develop sufficient levels of antibodies to give unequivocal results on the screening test for several weeks. If the test is negative, one reason may be that the sample was taken too early. But timing is crucial for a valid result. Patients with exposure to geographic areas where the deer tick is endemic, who present with symptoms consistent with Lyme disease, but don’t recall a tick bite, may benefit from testing. Testing Too Soon Can Lead to Negative Test ResultsAs with every diagnosis, the diagnosis of Lyme disease begins with a careful history. When the test for Lyme disease comes back negative, but your patient is still suffering, what might be the correct diagnosis? And if the result is positive, but treatment doesn’t provide complete resolution, what else could they be infected with? These are among the challenges facing the physician with a patient with suspected Lyme disease.

Did i do a western blot test