Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when the testing of the cerebrospinal fluid of patients suspected of having Lyme disease using the Trinity Biotech kit at the Health Protection Agency’s Lyme Borreliosis Unit began; how many patients' samples were tested in that way; and how many patients were recorded as being positive over that period of time.

The Trinity Biotech blot has been in use since 2007 by the former Health Protection Agency's Lyme Borreliosis Unit for testing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and proved very reliable. It has also been used in this way by other laboratories in Europe. However, CSF antibodies will not be present if there is no evidence of any other antibodies in the serum. Data is not collected centrally on specific samples from patients as the final diagnosis is made by the clinician on the basis of the test results and the clinical presentation.