An interesting article was just forwarded to me. I'm generally not excited about anything that appears in PLOS ONE for number of reasons but this one intrigued me from the stand point it wasn't Simply another DNA counting type test which despite all the yapping are meaningless because the do no titre (concentration) nor do they distinguish between live and dead Borrelia burgdorferi or just antibodies.
Yet thousands of patients are sucked into treatment regimes sometimes for years on end of high dose low dose antibiotics, have ports installed for even stronger antibiotics, and generally are duped by "Lyme Literate Physicians" for thousands of dollars offering no more than an assurance they found an "answer" to their illness when in fact they haven't.
This test has the potential of turning things upside down (despite a bit to much hype for my tastes in a "scientific article") PTLDS treatment upside down. There will be a lot of NPs and Lyme Literate Physicians taking down their shingles should this test actually distinguish between Live and Dead Borrelia burgdorferi do an actual titre and more importantly do a differential culture to determine what treatment will work. Its nice to know there are folks who are actually working on the issue and understand evidence based science requires first a foundation.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-11-drugs-lyme-disease.html