AngelaA

NCGirl- I do not know a lot about MS, but I do play a doctor on the Internet. Seriously, my Lyme doctor asked me specifically if I had ever been told that I had MS because he says over half his Lyme patients had been mistakingly told they had MS. He has treated over 1000 patients if that tells you anything. I had been told I that I had CREST Syndrome which is a very rare autoimmune disease. My dr thinks that I may not have an autoimmune illness at all so it will be interesting to see if my ANA antibodies go away and pain goes away with antibiotic treatment for Lyme. The dr did say Lyme causes high ANA antibodies in many people and can show up as any number of autoimmune diseases on a test when they don't really have autoimmunity. So I think one can infer from that that perhaps Lyme could affect MS panels. One should definitely investigate further. BTW My dr also stated that Plaquinel, steriods and MS medications will all make Lyme worse and are detrimental to treatment.

An afterthought- I would suggest searching for articles on Lone Star Tick. I ran across an article from Durham, NC about a number of people getting infections from this tick once thought rare. The infection is different from Lyme. Uhm...my dad just got bit by this species of tick tonight instead of the more common deer ticks that I have seen around here. He lives in eastern TN.