posted 09 December 2004 21:37               

Belief and opinion don't mean anything.

You don't even know what their treatment protocols were on antibiotics, etc.

Those who went on diflucan while on antibiotics, who are posting here, might have 1) not taken high enough doses or 2) have had coinfections

posted 11 December 2004 12:43            

It isn't worth getting our leggings twisted in knots over a study that only had 11 subjects. The study may have some merit. Time and a larger study group with documented protocols & bloodwork needs to be done. All the variables need to be considered.

Time to move on.

posted 11 December 2004 18:12               

if i can't get my ins. to pay for IVIG, then i will seriously think about giving this a shot.

i definitely like the idea of trying a protocol that professes to show imorovement in 50 days.

i will update if this is the direction i decide to pursue.

posted 11 December 2004 18:20               

what i was saying is that i am not currently on any abx, so i am really interested in this protocol.

if my ins. doesn't pay for IVIG, then i think i will give this a shot.

i like the idea that this could show results in 50 days.

i will let you know if i decide to give this a shot.

posted 12 December 2004 12:29               

For anyone who wants a good reliable price for Diflucan, and withOUT a prescription, follow this link:
www.antiaging-systems.com

I've ordered from them for years now. They are in Italy.

I am currently on and have been for a month or more now, Diflucan, at 100mg per day. I qualified for the "needy Meds program" that the manufacturer has. So, right now, I have plenty and just may bump mine up to 200mg per day and see.

This is a very expensive drug and the above website is the very best price that I have found, anywhere. Even a better price than my realfastdrugstore in Canada that I order most of my expensive meds that are not covered by my TogetherRX card available for Medicare receiptants.

I hope that this helps for sometimes even with insurance, patients are only given a few pills at best from their PCP's. Not sure about how much an LLMD gives for I've not needed him to for my PCP gave me this prescription.

Rosemary

posted 12 December 2004 15:28               

After treatment, they were off abx for 1 year with no relapse. That's pretty awesome. Who would not want to take 25 days of therapy and be done with it, and at the same time solve, or put a big dent in their candida problem? They recommend 50 days now, but 25 worked in the trial.

I would love to see a larger trial of 100 or more in the USA, but this is all we have for now.

Lymealive says that because of where the trial was done that we should take it with a grain of salt. We should always take everything that is posted here with a grain of salt, but I don't see why where the study was done, or whether it was at a last chance Gov disability clinic, that it would make it any less significant. I'm sure that people in Germany are probably saying the same thing about Trevor Marshall and the Marshall Protocol. That doesn't make his work any less true.

I am not trying to get people to try this protocol. I just want real life input from lymies who have been on diflucan to find out what their experience with it was, because trials don't always work in rel life like they do under controlled parameters.

The question is still: Has anyone taken Fluconazole at the right dose, for the right lenght of time? So far the answer is no. That tells me something right there. Some people have been on 100 mg for a month, but that isn't going to do do it. Some have taken 200 mg, but fore short periods.

Diflucan is suppose to be very hard on the liver. I think that is why Dr's are careful in prescribing it. Most of the time it is given in smaller doses that 200 mg for short periods of 10 days to 2 weeks. But if it really does work, then how much harder could it be on the liver than these high doses of 2 or 3 abx combos that LLMD's put patients on for months, or even years? BTW, it is recommended that the liver be monitored while on this drug.

posted 12 December 2004 16:29            

We should be willing to consider the possibility of non-antibiotic medications having an effect on Lyme. We now know that the Lyme organism has multiple forms, and that the non-spirochetal forms are poorly understood and poorly studied.

It's quite possible that anti-fungal or anti-viral drugs may affect Bb (or even some other types of drugs) ... not necessarily cure it, but at least help drive it into dormancy.

Dr. Burrascano has said that the improvement many Lyme patients experience from Mepron may not ONLY be because of treating Babesia ... it may be that Mepron actually treats the Lyme too.

Better treatment protocols may come from unexpected areas or ideas ... we need to keep an open mind.

posted 12 December 2004 19:45               

I understand what you are saying. Maybe there was some slanting. Of course we should be careful. I would like to see the full report that Hodologica says he has.

This guy could be onto something though, just as Trevor Marshall discovered that Benicar is a key player in solving some terrible CWD bacterial diseases. Maybe even lyme. All from a med that is only suppose to be for reducing blood pressure.

posted 12 December 2004 20:34               

i have some questions.

how long had the subjects been sick for?
what treatments had they had?
what were their symptoms before starting the diflucan?

posted 13 December 2004 01:07               

Hodologica,

How can you consider it dubious when you haven't even read it yet?

posted 13 December 2004 11:16               

My opinion is that Candida is Immune supressing in itself, which can cause the lyme disease and or coinfections to take over the body more easily...

When diflucan or another antifungal gets the candida under control the entire immune system gets strengthened and in turn can help keep the Lyme in check better which could be why those study subjects turned out negative on their blood work after treatment.

posted 13 December 2004 11:47               

quote:

---

Originally posted by hodologica:
[B]B]

---

Your allover the place arnt you??
http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=02/05/28/17434599#93

http://www.plastic.com/members.html;name=hodologica
http://www.chronicpelvicpain.us/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=622&sid=ab6c0a697e9872d92282ba4f1330fdda
http://www.marshallprotocol.com/forum31/1421.html
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://neurobiology.4t.com/custom2.html&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhodologica%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG

http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=1160

hmmmmm

posted 13 December 2004 12:08               

Good point Micul Well I have seen a couple people say long-term fluconazole at 200 mg /d didnt help them - sounded believable in my personal opinion.

Well now I have read it. Its only 2 pages!

Maybe "dubious" is a little harsh but some things here are odd IMO...

The fact that its a small study doesnt bother me a bit. When the theraputic difference youre trying to show is big, 11 patients is plenty IMO.

The reason it sometimes sounds like there were 12 patients and sometimes 11 is that one guy had a cerebral stroke a while after therapy. No shock there, he was 78 years old.

The fact that this was apparently done in some association with a gov't disability appraisal agency, in combination with the statement "8/11 patients were clinically cured," is something I find suspicious. What the hell is a "clinical" cure? The definition of "cure" "remission" etc is a huge problem IMO and I am sick of trying to figure out what different peoples uses of these words mean. "Clinical cure" sounds to me like its very possible the DOCTOR/author decided they were cured. And we all know what certain doctors and researchers are like, tho that doesnt mean Schardt is of that kind. I just dont know. But I do want to know what the patients themselves thought.

If anyone would like to do this, liver monitoring would be very desirable.

There are other threads on this here.

"Fluconazole achieves high concnetrations in many tissues as well as CSF."

"Only penicillins penetrate the blood/brain barrier in case of meningitis. Other abx used in tx of borrelia infections (doxy, erythromycin, cephalosporins) do not achieve effective CSF concentrations." Anyone know if this is true?

4 patients were IgM+ before tx and 3 of those were IgM- after. I dont know what the criteria for +/- were. Still, this makes the theory that these people had improvement in yeast *only* seem very questionable. Its still possible alot of their sx imporvement was due to yeast improvement. And, its possible increased immunocompetance due to yeast improvement allowed them to suppress Bb and go negative on IgM, but that is pure speculation.

"All included patients had been treated with abx in acute as well as in chronic stage borreliosis. Nueroborreliosis had been dx'd in all 11 [...]"

Heres something weird: "Two patients stopped taking fluconazole after 4 and 6 days, respectively, when they noticed considerable amelioration of their neurologic sx." Um, WHAT?!>?!? They STOPPED after 4 and 6 DAYS? That really makes me wonder how sick these people really were, tho maybe they just dont know much.

These two adjacent sentences seem to contradict each other: "No previously publsihed data exists on efficacy of fluconazole agaisnt borrelia in vitro. In vitro investigations failed to reveal a direct antibacterial effect of fluconazole on borrelia spp." They propose that the borreliacidal mechanism has to do with alteration of host metabolism and thus of host metabolites essential to borrelia.

posted 13 December 2004 12:24               

Someone had asked about their sometimes being 12 patients mentioned, sometimes 11. I said it was probably because one person (age 78, so no surprise) had a stroke and must have been left out of the final analysis. But in fact he was actually one of the 11 inthe study analysis and was listed as "slightly improved". The 12th person, I now realize, was the original case report that spurred the study in the first place. This person reportedly was cured by diflucan 10 years ago and has not relapsed in that time.

Therefore, if I am not mistaken, the person with the stroke is listed as "slightly improved" in the table but must be one of the four "considerably improved" as refered to inthe abstract. Of course its hard to asses his improvement since he had a cerebral stroke.

Here are the sx, patient by patient, from the chart:
CURED
polyneuritis, tachyarrythmia
meningoradiculitis, arthritis
polyneuritis, acrodermatitis
miningoradiculitis
radiculitis, painic disorder
polyeuritis
radiculitis
polyneuritis

IMPROVED
encephalomyelitis, depressive disorder
polyneuritis, arthritis
meningoradiculitis (the patient who had the stroke - "slightly improved")

Not sure how long the patients were sick but they were all "chronic."

Its an interesting study but I do wonder why there are people online who seem to have got little out of diflucan.

I dont mean to discourage/encourage anyone from doing this, just share the benefit of my access to this text. I dont really have a strong opinion on it anyway. And as for me I need to deal with babs now.

Sorry, I cant send it to anyone, I just hae a xerox.

posted 13 December 2004 13:20               

Schardt says maybe borrelia cant replicate and/or survive in the long run without certain host metabolites whose abundance may be influenced by the drug. He seems to feel that the fact that borrelia are "almost exclusively located intracellularly" makes this more plausible.

I think I recall Scott Taylor saying he thought maybe fluconazole could have a direct effect on borrelia but I am not at all sure.

You know, one possibility is that European borrelial species/strains are more susceptible to this tx. Anyone know anyone whos done 25 days of 200 mg fluconazole /d and has never been in the woods/fields except in Europe?