 | Keywords for this press release: reactive arthritis, Chlamydia-induced reactive arthritis, Reiter's syndrome, chronic ReA, Chlamydia trachomatis bacterium, antibiotic treatment, chlamydial gene transcription, heat-shock proteins, chlamydial protein synthesis, antibiotic combinations, doxycycline, azithromycin, rifampin |
Researchers from University of South Florida College of Medicine found a combination of antibiotics to be an effective treatment for
Chlamydia-induced reactive arthritis, a major step forward in the management, and possibly cure, of this disease. Results of this study are published in the May issue of
Arthritis & Rheumatism, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology.
Strep throat. An aerobic gram positive cocci which replicates every 20 minutes and infects superficial throat structures and tonsils is very different from an anerobic, pleomorphic, blood-brain crossing spirochete. Thankfully we rarely see rheumatic fever anymore, but patients with recurring disease were frequently treated with long term penicillin therapy including Bicillin injections. A significant percent of the population is permanently colonized with strep and remain so no matter how many courses of amoxicillin they take. PANDAS is a more contemporary issue in this same vein.
Guillain-Barre. An awful syndrome. Can be caused by flu vaccines, Lyme disease and many other infections. This is apples and oranges.
Patients with post-treatment Lyme have a disease so complex and varied that it can make your brain stop working or cause your heart to stop.
Nothing else is like this. Lyme spirochetes disseminate widely, easily cross into the brain and infect a host of tissues. These other syndromes are not comparable. The CDC piece is dismissive, essentially saying: autoimmune disorders occur in the aftermath of other infections so there is nothing special about this post-treatment Lyme syndrome which is relatively rare and gets better by itself anyhow.
Assertions that a few weeks of doxycycline kill all Lyme spirochetes have no basis in fact or science.
Antibiotics are not that effective. If they were we would die every time we took them. It is impossible to eradicate all the flora in our gut with any course of antibiotics, thankfully. Otherwise our immune systems would be fatally wounded. I do not believe we ever eradicate all dental spirochetes protected by biofilms with courses of antibiotics. How then are we going to eradicate Borrelia spirochetes, demonstrating the best survival skills of any organism on the planet. Spirochetes persist in mice, dogs, monkeys and people. It is an inconvenient truth.