Lyme disease testing: Canadians may receive false-positives from some US labs
2015-08-31
(Press-News.org) Lyme disease is becoming increasingly common in Canada, and Canadians with Lyme disease symptoms may seek diagnoses from laboratories in the United States, although many of the results will be false-positives, according to a commentary in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
"Patients with chronic subjective symptoms without a diagnosis can be vulnerable and desperate for an answer as to the cause of their illness," writes Dr. Dan Gregson, divisions of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, with coauthors. "Giving them a false diagnosis based on flawed testing is misleading."
Canadians with nonspecific symptoms such as joint pain, fatigue and mental fog may turn to commercial US laboratories because they suspect they may have Lyme disease. Many of these laboratories use only a single test that relies on nonevidence-based interpretation, such as the Western blot test. A positive test result that relies solely on Western blot testing is most likely a false-positive.
Recent research has found false-positive results in people without Lyme disease at 3 of 4 commercial US laboratories (ranging from 2.5% to 25%), with a rate of more than 50% of false positives at one lab.
Tests at the National Microbiology Laboratory of Canada, which uses guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), are as sensitive as those used in speciality US laboratories.
"Patients and physicians should be cautious in choosing a referral laboratory in the US when seeking 'second opinion' serology after receiving a negative test result in Canada," write the authors. "Laboratories that use the standard CDC two-tier testing algorithms should be preferred over those that report results based on unproven, unvalidated, in-house criteria."
Patients who are experiencing Lyme disease-like symptoms should receive a complete evaluation to determine the cause of their symptoms.
INFORMATION:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2015-08-31
(Philadelphia, PA) - Early intervention facilitated by a digital health application for reporting symptoms of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) provides key benefits for patients, according to the results of a Temple-led, two-year clinical study.
COPD is a serious chronic respiratory disease that is often characterized by flare-ups, called acute exacerbations, in which the patient may experience increased coughing, mucus, shortness of breath, wheezing, and a feeling of tightness in their chest. If exacerbation symptoms are not detected and treated in a timely ...
2015-08-31
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- In addition to restricting when and where tobacco is used at work, UC Davis Health System research shows that employers can do something else to reduce smoking: raise wages.
Published in the August issue of the Annals of Epidemiology, the study found that a 10 percent increase in wages leads to about a 5 percent drop in smoking rates among workers who are male or who have high school educations or less and improves their overall chances of quitting smoking from 17 to 20 percent.
"Our findings are especially important as inflation-adjusted wages ...
2015-08-31
Amsterdam, NL, August 31, 2015 - About 50% of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) experience freezing of gait (FOG), an inability to move forward while walking. This can affect not only mobility but also balance. In a new study published in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, researchers report that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) can reduce FOG and improve other motor skills in PD patients.
In a study conducted by researchers at the Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea, 17 PD patients experiencing FOG were treated with either ...
2015-08-31
BOSTON - Clinicians at Boston Medical Center (BMC) showed that expanding the number of sites offering office-based opioid treatment with buprenorphine (OBOT B) utilizing addiction nurse care managers, trainings and technical support resulted in more physicians becoming waivered to prescribe buprenorphine and more patients accessing treatment at sites across Massachusetts. This model, highlighted online in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, demonstrates the efficacy of this medication-assisted treatment modality as a sustainable way to treat greater numbers of patients ...
2015-08-31
NASA's Aqua satellite and NOAA's GOES-East satellites provided views of Hurricane Jimena that showed it maintained a large eye and powerful thunderstorms around it. On August 31, Jimena continued moving through the Eastern Pacific as a major hurricane.
An infrared image from NOAA's GOES-West satellite on August 31 at 8:00 a.m. EDT revealed that Hurricane Jimena's wide-eye continued to be cloud free. The GOES image also showed thick bands of powerful thunderstorms circling the eye.
The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard Aqua gathers infrared data ...
2015-08-31
A bill to improve the nutritional value of fast food restaurant meals marketed to children--like McDonald's Happy Meals--could have a wide enough impact to reduce calories, fat, and sodium, according to a new study led by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center.
The study, which will publish in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine online on August 31, includes collaboration from NYU College of Global Public Health, NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
The "Healthy Happy Meals" ...
2015-08-31
A team of scientists has successfully measured particles of light being "squeezed", in an experiment that had been written off in physics textbooks as impossible to observe.
Squeezing is a strange phenomenon of quantum physics. It creates a very specific form of light which is "low-noise" and is potentially useful in technology designed to pick up faint signals, such as the detection of gravitational waves.
The standard approach to squeezing light involves firing an intense laser beam at a material, usually a non-linear crystal, which produces the desired effect.
For ...
2015-08-31
In animals, numerous behaviors are governed by the olfactory perception of their surrounding world. Whether originating in the nose of a mammal or the antennas of an insect, perception results from the combined activation of multiple receptors located in these organs. Identifying the full repertoire of receptors stimulated by a given odorant would represent a key step in deciphering the code that mediates these behaviors. To this end, a tool that provides a complete olfactory receptor signature corresponding to any specific smell was developed in the Faculties of Science ...
2015-08-31
Researchers at the Babraham Institute have discovered a strong physical gene interaction network that is responsible for holding genes in a silencing grip during early development. In the same way that people can interact with others in close proximity, say within the same room, or others millions of miles apart, there are also short- and long-range interactions within the genome forming a three-dimensional configuration where different parts of the genome come into contact with each other. The research, reported online in Nature Genetics, presents how key decision-making ...
2015-08-31
Outpatient human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) health care facilities funded by the federal Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) were more likely to provide case management, mental health, substance abuse and other support services than those facilities not funded by the program, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.
RWHAP was established in 1990 to provide funds to states, metropolitan areas and clinics to increase access to high-quality HIV care and treatment for low-income, uninsured and underinsured individuals and families affected by ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Lyme disease testing: Canadians may receive false-positives from some US labs
