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Results of blood tests for Lyme disease vary greatly among different laboratories and even with the same laboratory, a new study shows. Experts said the variation in testing could lead to erroneous diagnoses and subject patients to unnecessary treatment

''The chronological cutoff doesn't make a lot of sense because someone who dies at 75 can be biologically younger than someone at 50,'' said Dr. Calvin R. Stiller, the head of transplant surgery at the University of Western Ontario in London and a leader in transplantation. ''There are donors currently not being used because of age,'' Dr. Stiller said. ''Better we find out whether they are usable and, if necessary, take the lobes out of those and put them into small children.'' Another bold step in transplantation occurred in Pittsburgh earlier this month, when a team led by Dr. Thomas E. Starzl gave Cindy Martin a new heart, liver and kidney. Mrs. Martin, who is 26 years old, is now in critical condition. Equity issues could become more important if multiple transplants are done on a larger scale, Dr. Starzl said, adding that in such cases, ''If Solomon were around, I'd turn the matter over to him.'' Ethics and Transplants: New Questions Multiple Transplants: Should three organs be used to save three lives or just one? When should single organs be kept for use at local centers instead of making clusters available for multiple transplants elsewhere? Should doctors, who have long been taught not to abandon a patient, consider the issue of equitable distribution of scarce resources? Living Donors: What risks to a living donor are acceptable? Under what circumstances should a donor give part of an irreplaceable organ like the liver? Restrictions on Donated Organs: How old is too old for a donor? What are the limits on using a flawed organ as a temporary transplant until a healthy organ is found?

The AIDS virus is more prevalent in the blood of infected people than scientists had believed, and there is no period of infection when the virus is dormant, new research shows. The two reports, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, provide new clues about how the human immunodeficiency virus causes infection and then multiplies in cells to destroy the body's immune system, causing AIDS. The authors, from Los Angeles and Seattle, said the findings may have practical importance by helping to speed the identification of new drugs and therapies that attack the virus

The AIDS virus is more prevalent in the blood of infected people than scientists believed, and there is no period of infection when the virus is dormant, new research shows. In the second and larger study, a team headed by Dr. Robert W. Coombs at the University of Washington and Children's Hospital in Seattle showed that the virus was always found in the blood once it was detected, challenging the contention that it is dormant at times. But the amount of the viruse found varied widely in the tests, which involved 213 people who were infected and 71 who were not. Linked to Stage of Disease In an editorial in the journal, Dr. David Baltimore and Dr. Mark B. Feinberg of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., said the new ''data should dispel any lingering doubts about whether HIV is the true culprit in AIDS.''

Experts in medicine have predicted that surgeons will take even bolder steps to come up with a more complex array of operations which will create even more patchwork patients

Scientists have found a deficiency of glutathione in a small study of people infected with the AIDS virus, raising the question of whether a deficiency of the substance leads to the collapse of the immune system

An increased risk of heart attack from taking cocaine can persist for at least two weeks after the start of a program, according to a study in The Annals of Internal Medicine

''It sure was suspicious that both were taking this product and that they have the same weird syndrome,'' Dr. [Phillip A. Hertzman] said. He called the New Mexico health department to alert officials and to ask if they knew of other unusual cases. They did not. ''Two patients taking L-tryptophan with the same syndrome? Is that a link?'' Dr. [Gerald J. Gleich] asked. ''Maybe. But three? Come on! I've seen hundreds of people with eosinophilia and never heard this L-tryptophan story.'' When Mayo doctors diagnosed two additional cases in patients who did not live in New Mexico, Dr. Gleich said he called Dr. [Edwin M. Kilbourne] again, telling him that it had gone beyond New Mexico, ''and it is serious.''

Federal health officials investigating a nationwide outbreak of a serious illness linked to a dietary supplement, L-tryptophan, say they are focusing on the way it was manufactured in Japan. The health officials said last week that two new studies had pointed to some unidentified factor, possibly a contaminant, in the manufacturing process as the cause of the syndrome, making them less suspicious that it was a result of pure L-tryptophan itself. The Food and Drug Administration has asked stores to remove all products containing L-tryptophan from their shelves to prevent more cases of the illness, eosinophilic-myalgia syndrome

Federal officials investigating a nationwide outbreak of a serious illness associated with the drug L-tryptophan say they are looking to the way the drug was manufactured in Japan as a probable cause for the epidemic