MOLO - View. Lyme Disease Test. Why do I need to register or sign in for WebMD to save?
We will provide you with a dropdown of all your saved articles when you are registered and signed in. A Lyme disease test detects antibodies to the Lyme disease bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi in the blood. Western Blot for Lyme Disease. The IgG and IgM Western Blot provides results in a way that lets us visualize the patient's antibodies.
It is more sensitive and specific than the ELISA and EIA (that is, it is more likely to show positives where the ELISA/EIA showed negatives). The IgG and IgM WB should always be used when the Lyme IgG/IgM antibody serology has returned an equivocal or positive result. If the patient is highly symptomatic of Lyme, there is actually no point in doing the ELISA or EIA serum tests, as they do not have the sensitivity or specificity of the Western Blot that is needed to have a prayer of detecting Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), the organism that causes Lyme disease.