Background: Lyme borreliosis is a multisystemic disease which affects several organs such as skin, nervous system, joints and the heart. The presented study focused on patients with persisting symptoms of the disease, which could be in correlation with Lyme disease but antiborrelial antibodies were not confirmed by screening tests.
Material and methods: 32 patients with anamnestic data and suspected clinical signs of lyme borreliosis were tested for the presence of antiborrelia antibodies by using ELISA and westernblot analysis and the state of cellular and humoral immunity.
Results: All patients had specific antiborrelial antibodies confirmed by using the westernblot in spite of negative ELISA. Immunological investigations revealed a deficiency of cellular immunity in all patients and in a part of them (15.6%) a deficiency of humoral immunity was also found. The presence of different types of autoantibodies was detected in 17 (53.1%) patients.
Conclusion: In patients with persisting difficulties that could be associated with Lyme disease, it is necessary to use the westernblot test which could prove the presence of specific antibodies. It is probably due to the very low production of specific antibodies caused also by the status of immune deficiency detected in all our patients (Tab. 1, Ref. 11).