lumbar puncture question.

[lsmelvin]

When a doctor orders a lumbar puncture, what are they looking for?
What is the order? I know when they order blood work they ask for certain things to be looked at. Like cholesterol levels, vitamin and electrolyte levels and so forth.  
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Laura

[kwarendorf]

As Alex said, the primary thing they are looking for is the presence of oligoclonal bands (o-bands) in you Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) and their absence from a blood (serum) sample taken at the same time.

O-Bands are an organizational pattern of proteins that result from inflammation. If the bands are present in the CSF but not in the serum, they can confirm, or suggest, MS.

Kyle

[ErinZoe23]

They did a LP on me for Lyme and MS, i dont belive it really tells you much. I had i think a few bands but also in my blood i had a few that were for lyme and tested postive for lyme twice but was ignored.when u get you blood work done make sure it goes to a proper lab. There are special lyme labs and they send u back the exact report which u can understand! Some drs ignore lyme because youll only have 1 or 2 bands of it in you but no normal person has any of these. in other words  its just not strong enough to say its positive but its still there. rather ridiculouse. Um also they do blood work with the LP to get a clearer picture and are able to rule out alot more. Like HVAC i had alot of  bloodwork done, only a yr worth prob every month 6 tubes every time lol insane amount. But its good they r looking to rule out i had to ask them to rule out everything else b.c they jumped to it bc my symptoms were clear and mri had lesions (lyme can cause lesion also)  if you go to google and type in the 2 diseases you will find alot of very helpful information on the LP that can better clarify what they are looking for. Sorry i forget all the technical terms and such its been maybe 4 yrs since i went through that all but if you need help finding the info just inbox me

[lsmelvin]

Thank you very much for the information. I have tested positive for lyme's in the past when blood work was done.  So hopefully the lumbar puncture can tell if it is lyme's or ms.

[HVAC]

They are basically measuring the o-bands in your Cereberal Spinal Fluid against the o--bands in your blood serum. The blood serum has to be taken at the same  time of the Spinal Tap. This a specialized test sent to only a few labs in the country. If you have 2 or more o-bands only in your CSF they will check you for a few more illnesses by doing more blood work. My whole process took six weeks. I had 12 0-bands only in the CSF which is high, They then checked for Lupus which I had a false positive but the second test was negative for Lupus. In the end I was diagnosed with MS.

They look at kinds of blood work with MS to rule out other illnesses. I had two years of blood work.

Alex