CDC's original "case definition" based on 1986 Steere's serial or sequential
Western Blot
recommendation to look for new or changing or expanding IgM antibodies,
which is accurate for a Relapsing Fever organism:
It says "SERIAL WESTERN BLOTS
SHOULD BE PERFORMED to look for changing and expanding IgM and
IgG
antibodies, because, Allen Steere says, that shows the spirochete is still
alive."
Changing and expanding Western Blots
results meant persisting infection
because Lyme is a relapsing fever borreliosis,
one of
many types of borrelioses. They
are all borrelioses. The only
thing that is different about Lyme is that
it is from a
different tick than usual.
Here is Allen Steere, where he
develops this concept of serial Western
Blots- which later the CDC adopted as a standard,
here, in
1990: Steere- The author of the original CDC
Lyme test, which is this one, below.
