Original sentence: However studies show the Western blot IgM has a specificity of 94-96% for patients with symptoms suggestive of Lyme disease with infection by Borrelia burgoferi
Edited sentence: Antibodies to numerous proteins important in human infection are not even tested under the current blot standard due to the failure of the authors of these criteria to temperature shift their cultures used for blotting purposes.Because the antibody response is not consistent in American CSF samples, and PCR while definitive yields only 30% accuracy, the diagnosis of lyme encephalopathy must be made on clinical grounds and should include, in addition to standard serology and intrathecal testing, MRI, SPECT, and neuropsychological assessment, as well as the ruling out of such conditions as syphilis, lupus, brucellosis, and HIV encephalopathy {as examples}.For these reasons, experts consider the CDC criteria to be almost worthless in assessing late CNS lyme encephalopathy.However studies show the Western blot IgM has a specificity of 94-96% for patients with symptoms suggestive of early Lyme disease with infection by Borrelia burgoferi.Moreover, the 'control' group for this study included a large number of patients who, rather than being healthy, had syndromal diagnoses which could have been caused or complicated by late CNS lyme: MS and CFS being prime examples.Subsequent research has demonstrated the Borrelia differentially regulate their outer surface proteins according to stage of infection and even tissue type.The 'control' group was further polluted by the inclusion of 25 syphilitic patients, which represented 20% of the control, whereas the incidence of syphilis in the general population is about 3 per 100,000.The CDC surveillance criteria were formulated utilizing a cohort of patients who mostly manifested early disease.This selection vastly distorted the meaning of the antibody response at 41 kDa