How long does igenex test take

But the bacteria can spread and lead to multiple rashes, indicating disseminated Lyme disease. In addition, signs of disseminated Lyme disease can neurologic conditions, such as cranial nerve palsy particularly facial nerve palsy and meningitis that mimics aseptic meningitis.

Heart inflammation can also be a sign of Lyme disease. With the click of a button, a test can be shipped to your front door. When choosing at-home Lyme disease tests to feature, we looked at affordability, accuracy, ease in reading directions, and what made the specific tests stand out from the crowd. In some instances, you may be able to use your insurance. Check your state guidelines to see if you can get one shipped to you. With a sample of blood via a finger prick, LetsGetChecked tests for Borrelia IgM, the first antibody produced when fighting an infection, and IgG antibodies, the most abundant antibody found in the body.

High levels of IgG antibodies and low levels of IgM antibodies indicate a past or active infection with Borrelia bacteria. Once you get your test, activate it. A video on the website details how to collect your blood sample.

The sample must be collected before 10 a. You should take the test before you eat breakfast that day. Note that you can freely drink water before taking the test. After the sample arrives at the lab, confidential results will be available in your account in 2 to 5 business days. Everlywell is an easy-to-use at-home Lyme disease test. The Everlywell digital platform is user-friendly, and the instructions are easy to understand and follow.

Like other at-home tests, once you register the kit, you take your finger prick and send the sample back to the company. The Everlywell test looks for three strains of bacteria: Borrelia garinii , Borrelia afzelii , and Borrelia burgdorferi. Everlywell tests are reviewed and approved by an independent board certified physician in your state. Tests can be purchased from the Everlywell site or Amazon. Potentially, you can take the blood sample to a lab with same-day testing.

Personalabs works with 2, certified labs around the country. Once you get the kit, you take your sample directly to the lab of your choosing. Results will be uploaded to your account online. IGeneX makes a comprehensive test for tick-borne illnesses. You can choose to do a blood or urine sample.

Blood samples must be provided at an IGeneX-approved lab. The results will be sent to your doctor for review. After you order a kit, you must fill out the appropriate paperwork. This information tells the company where to send the results.

The test will look for several markers of Lyme disease to ensure accuracy. You can also choose from five different panels of testing.

Some of these panels, for example, look at T cells, antibodies, DNA, and antigen. Every health insurance policy is different, but the company does work with insurance providers and sometimes Medicare. To ensure that you will be reimbursed for IGeneX, contact your insurance provider for benefit-specific information before purchasing. DNA ConneXions tests for 12 vector-borne pathogens, including several strains of the Borrelia bacteria. Each kit comes in a box with a sterile urine collection cup, one clear specimen transport biohazard bag, two strips of parafilm, one UPS second-day return shipping label with a UPS laboratory bag, and one set of urine collection instructions.

This test checks for a gene that predisposes you to an increased risk of post-treatment Lyme disease. SelfDecode is similar to the 23andMe health test. If you develop symptoms after initial treatment and recovery, you should see your doctor to determine if it is a new infection or a recurrence of symptoms from an earlier infection.

It can be difficult to distinguish whether or not your symptoms are the result of a new infection or a previous infection. If you have not been exposed again to tick bites, then a symptom recurrence may be due to either another unrelated illness, a tick co-infection that was not previously identified, a Borrelia-triggered immune mediated symptom complex that now has its own time course for resolution, or a re-emergence of the initial infection that had been only partially treated.

In most cases, a solo EM rash and fever would be a sign of a new acute infection. However, some patients do experience recurrent EM rashes known as satellite rashes that may occur later in the course of disease. Serologic testing carried out by your physician may help in the interpretation of your current symptoms. For example, if the quantity of antibodies in the serum as determined by a specific test such as the C6 ELISA shows a marked increased compared to what had been seen in a prior test after treatment, that would suggest a re-infection as the amount of spirochetal stimulus to the immune system is going to be vastly higher after a tick-bite than what might occur from a reactivated latent infection.

To be considered a confirmed case by CDC for epidemiologic surveillance in the absence of a rash, a person has to have laboratory evidence of infection and at least one late manifestation of Lyme disease. Late manifestations of Lyme disease considered diagnostic are: joint swelling, facial palsy or other specific signs of nervous system involvement, or specific cardiac conduction defects. The CDC also has criteria for a "probable case", defined as physician-diagnosed Lyme disease that has laboratory evidence of infection.

Suspected cases without an EM are those with laboratory evidence of infection but no clinical information available. The cause of the psychological symptoms in Lyme disease is unclear. It is clear that patients with acute Lyme disease who develop new onset depressive symptoms or irritability or cognitive disturbances often show a remarkable improvement when given antibiotic therapy.

If the psychological symptoms persist or if the initial symptoms are severe, it is very important to consult with a psychiatrist to evaluate how best to treat these symptoms apart from the antibiotic therapy. When symptoms continue even after a repeated course of antibiotic therapy, this could be due to the fact that an activated immune system results in a change in neurotransmitter functioning. As a result, the altered neurotransmitter function may contribute to ongoing depressive symptoms, even after the immune system is no longer activated.

Treatment of the psychiatric symptoms at that point would require anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medications or psychotherapy. Lyme disease can affect eye sight in a number of ways. If the extraocular muscles are involved as in a cranial nerve palsy, then the muscle weakness may result in double vision. Patients may report that their visual acuity appears to be less or that they have lost color vision or can't see the full visual field.

Some patients mistakenly think that "floaters" seen on the surface of the eye are spirochetes — floaters are normal and are common in healthy people as well If there is central involvement of the visual pathways, then some patients may experience a marked sensory hyperacusis such as prominent painful light sensitivity requiring the wearing of sunglasses in normal daylight or rarely visual trails.

In very rare cases, an unattenuated increase of intracranial pressure esp in children from neurologic Lyme disease may result in blindness. Of course, any visual problems should be checked by an ophthalmologist or a neuro-ophthalmologist who can then perform a thorough differential diagnosis to rule out other conditions. Chronic fatigue is a common problem after any infection.

In many cases, the fatigue dissipates after the infection has resolved. In a subgroup of patients, the fatigue may persist for many months and sometimes longer. It is unknown why some patients go on to develop post-infectious fatigue and others do not. There is genetic evidence that some patients may carry genetic markers that may indicate their risk for post-infectious fatigue.

At present, it appears that the problem of persistent fatigue is mediated by the autonomic nervous system, the hypothalamic-pituiatry-adrenal axis, and genetic vulnerability. Fatigue is a common problem in many disorders; before one attributes all to a post-infectious or persistent infectious state, one needs to make sure a thorough evaluation has been done to rule out other causes of fatigue, such as thyroid abnormalities, anemia, or cancer.

In regards to Lyme disease, we assume that after treatment some patients have persistent fatigue as a result of the processes above, whereas others may still harbor a small amount of persistent infection that may require re-treatment. These are active areas of current research.

John Halperin who was then a neurologist at Stony Brook conducted a study in which he compared the frequency of blood test positivity to the agent of Lyme disease among patients with ALS to community controls.

Since then, there have been isolated case reports both in the media and one or two in the academic literature indicating that a patient had been misdiagnosed with an ALS-like illness only later to be re-diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease with good clinical response.

Although we suspect that there may be rare individuals who have symptoms similar to ALS but actually have proximal motor neuropathy caused by Lyme disease, the vast majority of patients with ALS are not thought to have Lyme disease as the cause of their serious disease. Clinical trials have been underway using antibiotics for ALS such as minocycline or ceftriaxone not because there is belief that ALS is caused by a microbe but because these antimicrobial agents have other properties as well, such as decreasing inflammation or decreasing glutamatergic excitotoxicity.

The studies examining intravenous ceftriaxone as a treatment for ALS were not successful. Lots of diseases could be misdiagnosed as Lyme disease. This of course makes sense when you know that Lyme disease itself may manifest as a multisystemic disorder that can mimic other diseases. This means that just as the Lyme disease might be "missed" in some cases, some individuals may be misdiagnosed as having Lyme disease when in fact they have another disease.

Erring on either side of this diagnostic divide can be dangerous. Given that the main symptoms that afflict patients with Lyme disease are fatigue and pain and given that these are non-specific symptoms seen in a wide ranges of diseases, including cancer, hematologic, and endocrine disorders, one has to make sure to rule out other reasonable causes of fatigue and pain before making the diagnosis of Lyme disease. It is also important to realize that a patient can have two independent diseases - Lyme disease and another emergent condition.

For example, concurrent depression,sleep apnea or hypothyroidism may exacerbate fatigue in a patient with actual Lyme disease. It would be extremely unusual to misdiagnose a child with autism as having Lyme disease. Lyme disease typically gets diagnosed when a child has joint and muscle pains, along with fatigue, positive blood tests, and central or peripheral nervous system involvement.

Certainly a child with autism may also get Lyme disease and thus have two disorders. In that situation, treatment of Lyme disease should result in a resolution of the Lyme disease but it would not likely result in a change in the autism symptoms.

The question of interest to us is whether there are cases of "regressive autism" that occur in older pre-school age children years olds for example that has been induced by a central nervous system infection, such as with Borrelia burgdorferi. In such a situation, treatment with antibiotics may well result in an improvement in the developmental regression. This area however has not been adequately studied.

Depression is a word that encompasses physical, cognitive, and emotional components. The physical would be poor sleep, fatigue, low energy, lack of sex drive. The cognitive would include poor concentration and trouble making decisions. The emotional would include feeling guilty, hopeless, suicidal, and being unable to enjoy life in any aspect.

Chronic symptoms triggered by Lyme disease are most often associated with insomnia or hypersomnia, fatigue, headaches, pain, and, not uncommonly, problems with cognition as well. In other words, chronic Lyme symptoms are most often associated with the physical and cognitive parts of the depressive picture and less often with the emotionally despairing part. When a person presents with the emotional part that is sustained for at least 2 weeks, it may be that a full syndrome depression has emerged related to the Lyme disease or that it is a concurrent but unrelated illness.

The emotional aspects of depression might occur secondarily to being sick with a physical illness or directly from an infection affecting the brain or from chemicals affecting the brain that were released by infection outside of the brain.

When a person has Lyme encephalitis ie, infection in the brain causing inflammation , the emotional part of depression can be very dramatic. The person might be suddenly tearful for no apparent reason, have very poor frustration tolerance, become paranoid or angered at the least provocation, and appear to have a personality change. One should wonder about an underlying medical illness when there are: a atypical features to the depression; b an atypical response to good psychiatric treatments; or c when the physical symptoms are more predominant.

It should be noted that the elderly often present with primarily physical complaints — not emotional ones — as their manifestation of primary depression.

Regarding your question about your child, we can not give specific advice regarding a specific person we have not seen. However, in general, if the child does not have other features of Lyme disease present, such as marked fatigue, headaches, joint pain, muscle pain, then it is less likely that the depression is a sign of a relapse.

Remember that Lyme disease is most often a multi-systemic illness with multi-systemic problems. It may be helpful to refer to a child psychiatrist. If the child is not improved within several months, then consider a more thorough work-up.

A spinal tap can be helpful — although not always abnormal in neurologic Lyme disease, when it is abnormal that is a helpful sign of brain involvement currently. We do not know of any evidence that Lyme disease causes sleep apnea, although sleep apnea has been associated with other encephalitic disorders. Sleep apnea may look like Lyme disease. For example, patients with sleep apnea may be difficult to arouse when asleep, will have excessive daytime sleepiness, and may complain of insomnia.

They may have morning headaches, inattentiveness, and a decline in school or work performance. Hypertension may also occur. One can have sleep apnea without being obese. The problem can occur in children as well as adults. The diagnosis is made at a sleep lab after special tests of respiratory function and all-night polygraphic sleep monitoring.

Patients with central sleep apnea may have lesions in the medulla with ninth and 10th cranial nerve palsies with trouble swallowing or speaking. Patients with obstructive sleep apnea tend to be overweight and to have large tonsils. These patients may snore and then have second periods at night when breathing appears to stop.

Patients will then take a deep snorting breath and then return to sleep, unaware of what just happened. Treatment is determined by the severity of the symptoms and the type. In central apnea, medroxyprogesterone and protriptyline can be helpful. Weight loss and surgical correction are the treatments for the obstructive type. Patients may experience enormous relief after the surgery. Symptoms previously incorrectly attributed to Lyme disease may now resolve completely.

Multiple sclerosis and Lyme disease may have similar clinical and neuroimaging manifestations. Further, MS patients can get superimposed Lyme disease — a concomitant infection which might make the MS worse by triggering an exacerbation. Similar to MS, infection with the agent of Lyme disease can cause a progressive encephalomyelitis characterized by para- or tetraspastic pareses with gait difficulties, ataxia, bladder dysfunction, visual disorders, impaired hearing.

Other manifestations of encephalomyelitis might include lateral nystagmus, intention tremors, dysarthric speech, seizures, facial palsies, retrobulbar neuritis, mild cognitive disorders though rare dementia-like manifestations may occur.

Lyme disease however more often causes a CSF pleocytosis and elevated protein. In Lyme disease, evoked potential studies are generally but not always normal.

MS patients do not have extra-neural features, as one may often find in patients with neurologic Lyme disease arthralgias, arthritis, myalgias, erythema migrans, carditis. If one finds intrathecal production of antibodies against Borrelia burgdorferi in the CSF, then the diagnosis of Lyme encephalomyelitis is confirmed.

If one finds elevated myelin basic protein and oligoclonal bands and no signs of intrathecal Lyme antibody production, then the diagnosis of MS is much more likely. Order a Test Kit. Complete Paperwork with your doctor Your kit will come with the appropriate paperwork, which you need to complete with your doctor to determine the specific tests IGeneX will conduct with your samples.

Take Kit to blood draw site Take your test kit and all contents including paperwork, to a blood draw site. Once your sample is collected, the kit needs to be mailed to IGeneX, by either yourself or the blood draw site, for analysis. Find a blood draw site. Get Results IGeneX will conduct the tests as determined by you and your doctor, and will send the results to your doctor when completed.

The last step is to visit your doctor for interpretation of results, diagnosis, and to discuss your treatment options. Please refer to the list of recommended drawing labs. If you do not live close to any of the listed drawing labs, then consult with the local labs in your area, or the local hospital. See hours above. For the most up to date and accurate information and articles about ticks and tick-borne diseases, please visit Tick Talk Resource.

Why IGeneX? Shopping Cart. Does IGeneX bill insurance? IGeneX does not accept assignment from or submit claims to insurance companies except for patients who have Medicare — Medical Part B coverage. Medicare Part B payments may be made directly to patients; patients will be responsible for reimbursing IGeneX for any payments they receive and for any services that are not covered by Medicare.

IGeneX will send you an itemized statement of charges. The statement lists the services you received, along with the amount charged, and the CPT procedure codes.