There are several routes medical professionals can take to diagnose Lyme disease. The mainstay option is the Western blot test or an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test. These tests are used together as a two-step process to determine whether or not a person has a Lyme infection.
In some cases, the ELISA test won’t be able to return a positive diagnosis because the early stages of Lyme disease may not be caught. This is because an ELISA test looks for specific antibodies, and the immune system needs time to create those after initially contracting the bacterial infection. The Western blot, on the other hand, is used to determine if there are antibodies or traces of the bacteria’s proteins within the blood.
While these tests are typically the first port of call, another test can be used to determine whether or not a person has had Lyme disease: the CD57 blood test. But what is the CD57 blood test, and what does it mean to have a low CD57 count?
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