what does a lumbar puncture look for?

My DH has some lesions that suggest MS. His initial blood work is negative (lyme, clotting disorder etc). The neuro wants to do an LP to look for "inflammation". can anyone tell me what he's really looking for?

[maggs970]

hi there they are looking for o bands for ms in your spinal fluid this was the end to my jigsaw puzzle for my diagnosis of ms in july i had mris evp test and lumbar puncture they can tell by how many o bands in the fluid as far as i know all the best.

[ny12345]

anything else? I'm wondering if they are also going t test it for Lyme again and other possibilities. My dh doesn't present like a "normal" MS patient. thanks!

[LoveMyBostons]

My (very basic) understanding is that if there is protein/infection present in the spinal fluid but not in the bloodwork, this does not support an MS diagnosis. Proteins that are only present in the spinal fluid are indicative of something other than MS. I think if there is protein present in both the spinal fluid and the bloodwork, this is consistent with an MS diagnosis.

[ny12345]

interesting. what protein test would they  have run on the blood? he had a bunch done, but nothing I was aware was looking for MS. It seemed they were mostly looking at clotting issues and basic CBC kind of information. I'd love to understand this better because he definitely is not a classic case of anything at this point and I want to be sure we are exploring everything we should. Thanks so much.

[Lulu54]

A good, easy to understand explanation of the spinal tap procedure appeared in the new york times health pages..   here is the address

http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/test/cerebral-spinal-fluid-csf-collection/overview.html


If the censor zaps this address, google

new york times lumbar puncture

and it should be the top citation on the search page.

my best,
Lulu