My CD57 was consistently in the 'normal' or perfect range even when I was at my worst. Others, with Lyme, who felt just a bit sick were near zero. It just shows to go ya. (grin)
There are many threads here about the CD57, if you care to search.
This is by a well-known blogger:
http://lymemd.blogspot.com/2009/01/cd57.html
"So I have been ordering this test for years. Thousands. Unfortunately, I am left with the conclusion that it has been of very little help to my patients. I have seen no correlation between CD57 and disease activity. Patients in clinical remission may have very low levels and patients with end stage tertiary Lyme disease may have very high levels. Individual immune responses are difficult to predict.
Dr. Burrascano has suggested that the CD57 test might be an inexpensive way to screen for Lyme disease. I do not agree. Physicians may order CD57 levels because they are looking for evidence to support the diagnosis. I do not think this approach will not hold up to careful scrutiny"
If you're using Quest as the lab---- that's not the lab that the originator of the CD57 recommends----it's LabCorp. But perhaps Quest referenced it out to LabCorp.
My CD-57 has been accurate. Low means still sick. My Lyme friends have used it too but I have heard on here it doesn't always work. Dr Burascano believes in it. He is the
a famous LLMD.
Just sent you a PM [private message] with a link to a website with some info about CD57. I don't know how accurate the commentary is, so fwiw. It does explain what CD57 is. I think wiki also has an explanatory write up.
I have not studied the literature on CD57, but a while back (a few years ago) there seemed to be a possibility that the status of Lyme in a person (low level, high level, etc) could be gauged by fluctuations in the CD57.
Recently I think I've seen some commentary that CD57 hasn't turned out to be as useful a marker as initially hoped. My Lyme doc tested me for it over time, but never discussed it with me.
It may turn out that there is some correlation between status of a Lyme infection and the CD57 levels, but there may be confounding factors that make it less than really useful. The jury may still be out on this.
Your doc is probably wise to keep an open mind, because there are quite a number of potential co-infections of Lyme that mess with the test readings, and my impression is that there is still a lot of work to be done to figure out how to read and interpret this marker.