In December of last year I starting feeling fatigued..over the next few weeks my symptoms included tingling, numbness, pins & needles in my arms and legs, extreme fatigue, sharp muscle, joint and bone pain, cardiac palpitations & chest pain and blurry/floaty vision. Over the course of 3 months I saw numerous neurologists, rhuematologists etc...who could find nothing wrong. In March I finally got to Infectious Disease doctor who also happens to be an LLMD and I found out I tested postitive for Bartonella (negative for Lyme). He put me on 400mg of doxy, which I have been on for the past 11 weeks. Just before I went on the doxy..some of my symptoms had begun to dissapate on their own although I still wasn't even close to 100%. The first 3-4 weeks of doxy were difficult but after that I noticed great and steady improvement in all my symptoms..in fact for the last month and a half I had been very close to 100% symptom free. ALl of a sudden these past 7 days (I'm still on the doxy...I have 2 more weeks of pills left) I've noticed the muscle/joint pain has begun to return as has some of the tingling & numbness in my arms...I have an LLMD appointment next week. Do I possibly have another co-infection? Is doxy effectieb against bartonella? Just when I was starting to look forward to life again...this happens Posted by Lymetoo (Member # 743) on :
I would suspect a coinfection.... because it's my understanding that doxy does not work against bartonella.
Also...sometimes it takes several cycles for the REAL herxing to rear its ugly head. That may be what you are now experiencing.
Hopefully, others will give you more info on the doxy.
thanks for the advice...my LLMD said that doxy was the standard treatment for bartonella...i'm going to have to ask him again
Posted by HaplyCarlessdave (Member # 413) on :
Were you tested for babesia ("babs')? Babs can interfere with lyme test results, so you could have lyme too. And that coinfection can make lyme MUCH harder to get over.
ps: you can still have lyme but test negative for it. The blood tests are iffy at best. Here are some reasons why you can still have lyme & test negative for it:
Good luck
Posted by CaliforniaLyme (Member # 7136) on :
Actually one of the best treatments for Bartonella includes Doxy- it is Doxy PLUS Gentamycin- but Doxy is not the best tx for Bartonella unless it is combined with gentamycin-they did a study re Bart Quintana and Doxy & gentamycin which showed it worked well- and it doesn't mutate like cipro-
and even then there are tx failures- so demand more tx!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Molecular mechanisms of resistance to antibiotics in Bartonella bacilliformis.
Biswas S, Raoult D, Rolain JM. Unit� des Rickettsies, CNRS UMR 6020, IFR 48, Facult� de M�decine et de Pharmacie, Universit� de la M�diterran�e, 27 Bd Jean Moulin, 13385 Marseille Cedex 05, France.
OBJECTIVES: Bartonella bacilliformis is the aetiological agent of Carrion's disease. Although ciprofloxacin, rifampicin and erythromycin have been successfully used in the treatment of the disease, failures and relapses have been reported. The objective of our study was to select in vitro mutants resistant to antibiotics in order to determine the frequency of mutations and to characterize the mechanism of resistance at the molecular level.
METHODS: Antibiotic-resistant mutants were selected by serial passages of bacteria on blood agar plates containing antibiotics. Candidate genes involved in resistance were amplified and sequenced and compared in order to look at mutations associated with antibiotic resistance.
RESULTS: Ciprofloxacin-, rifampicin- and erythromycin-resistant mutants were obtained after five, three and four passages, respectively. Conversely, no mutant was obtained with either gentamicin or doxycycline even after 16 passages. The ciprofloxacin mutant contained an amino acid change at position 87 (Asp --> Asn) in its quinolone resistance-determining region of the DNA gyrase protein, whereas the rifampicin-resistant strain had an amino acid change at position 531 (Ser --> Phe) in the rifampicin resistance-determining region of the rpoB gene. Similarly, the erythromycin-resistant mutant showed an A2058G mutation in the 23S rRNA gene. CONCLUSIONS: According with the current knowledge on the treatment of human bartonellosis, we believe that doxycycline in association with gentamicin may be the preferred regimen for the treatment of the acute and eruptive stages of Carrion's disease, but clinical trials are warranted to support our findings.
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