posted
I was looking through some of old microscope photos I took last year and found this one:
It seems like we still have a real zoo living in us, but looking back at photos from 8 or 9 months ago, we sure look alot better now!
Posts: 714 | From San Antonio TX | Registered: Oct 2004
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SForsgren
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 7686
posted
Babesia usually looks like four little circles within the red blood cell like
oo oo
I have seen it with some darkfield that I have had done.
-------------------- Be well, Scott Posts: 4617 | From San Jose, CA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Based on stain "standard" slides of Babesia from Wards, your photo is very similar in shape to the babs organisms within the red blood cells that I am seeing in the standards.
How did you get the photo in the message, was it a simple cut and paste? What format. I had tried before and didn't get it to work. Thanks, Ernie
Posts: 546 | From Cascadia subduction zone | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
It is just a little standard HTML that works in most places. The picture should be a .jpg format and not be too big so as to be too wide on some people's screens or take too long to load.
You type the command like this example, and enclose it in angle brackets <>.
IMG SRC=http://website.com/some_picture.jpg
I skipped the angle brackets in the example so it wouldn't try to load it as a picture.
...and anyone who wants to look at it can click it. This is always best (and most polite) if the image is very large.
Posts: 714 | From San Antonio TX | Registered: Oct 2004
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map1131
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
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posted
During one of my darkfields 2 yrs ago one of those creatures busted through the cell wall as my naturopath and I watched. She about freaked out. Some type of parasite she said. I was thinking protoza babesia at the time.
I just don't have many babesia sx. Chills yes, sweats rarely. Others no.
Who knows???
Pam
-------------------- "Never, never, never, never, never give up" Winston Churchill Posts: 6478 | From Louisville, Ky | Registered: Jan 2002
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david1097
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posted
Hi
Dark field is not that good for looking at the larger items so it is hard to say for sure, It may be some type of stuff left over from fractured cells. Your stained photos from the other post are interesting in that the inclusiuons in some of the RBC's look rather ominous, but it is a bit hard to figure out since a lot of the cells are stacked on top of each other. As a comparison, I took these thin films using phase contrast @ 1600 X , blue filter. No stain was used.
In this one you can see a WBC as well as a fractured RBC with "inclusions" still tangled with the RBC wall remnants.
Or this one
Here you can see the "inclusions" just coming out of a fractured RBC. I suspect that the fracture occured during the thin smear as it is known that these parasites (or what ever they are) typically reduce the strength of the RBC wall. After a thin smear you can see a lot of these broken RBC's. amny of the fractured cells have 4 of these things inside.
I had read an interesting paper about the transmission of babesia in blood donation. The paper indicated that if you centrifuge the blod to seperate the serum, you end up with a lot of parasites in stratum about the rbc slug. I suppose these are from the rbc's breaking under the added g's but the paper indicated that there are typically very large numbers of the babesia parsites things free floating in the blood even in peopel with low levels of parasitemia.
And here is another one showing some type of bifrucation in the inclusion. The eventually seperate into 2 discrete objects (And sometimes 4) apparently at about the time that the cell becomes fragile.
These where dried thin smears so everything on these photos is bascially fixed in place. The dish shape of the RBC's is clearly visible with the diffraction lines on the centers. The difraction makes it a bit confusing but the inclusion are quite clearly very dark.
I forgot to mention that the "black fuzzy thing in each slide is a marker that I used for centering th camera. It is actually a speck of dust on the optics, but I leave it there so I have a reference point for objects that are of interest.
Posts: 1184 | From north america | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
The really interesting things aren't always found in the best sections of the slide.
The stained slides date back to before I found an LLMD and was still trying to figure out what was wrong... with the usual no help from the ducks.
I believe it actually was one of the lesser Malarias, probably Plasmodiom malariae, since that was considered endemic to this area and has had little surveillance for decades. I have also been in areas in Mexico where it is endemic.
I think this because a week of high dose artemisinin got rid of it and I have not found it again on a stained smear. Babesia would be much tougher!
Those are interesting pictures! I also have an old Unitron scope with phase contrast, but it produces a little different looking images than those.
(You might want to crop the black borders of those images a little before the "wide post police" come after you.) Posts: 714 | From San Antonio TX | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
wow interesting stuff..Will you view and post our blood if we pay you? How come the supposed proffesionals can't find stuff like this and we walk around undiagnosed for years and years? When it is right there to see under a microscope?
Are they just blind or they just don't care to look?...ugh
daniella
-------------------- ~Things may happen in my life time to change who I am but I refuse to let them reduce me...~ Posts: 968 | From private | Registered: Jan 2005
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5dana8
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posted
Daneilla That is a very good question!
-------------------- 5dana8 Posts: 4432 | From some where over the rainbow | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
To be fair to our Doctors, few of them have extensive training in Microbiology, and rarely use it in their practices anymore. That's just the environment they work in.
When you find something, it is often very difficult to make a positive identification of it by what it looks like alone. Many bacteria look almost identical, viruses are too small to see at all.
Then there is the question of whether what is seen is causing the illness. Some people can have alot of stuff living in them and not be very sick. Others that LOOK less infected might be very sick. Is it a dangerous infection, or just a harmless colonization?
So, interpretation can be very subjective/ It requires alot of skill and experience on the part of the pathologist. With the trend of automating labwork, there are few of those guys left.
That said... I think the real problem is that the medical community in general is trying really hard NOT to see this disease, for all of the reasons that have been discussed many times.
These pictures are just from tools available to resourceful ordinary people that they might find on eBay.
With the resources large labs have at their disposal, they could do so much more... if they were of mind to.
Posts: 714 | From San Antonio TX | Registered: Oct 2004
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5dana8
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posted
I agree James .Not the doctors at all.It's the labs. If ordinary people can do this why can't the labs! If I live to be a hundred I will never understand.
-------------------- 5dana8 Posts: 4432 | From some where over the rainbow | Registered: Sep 2005
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5dana8
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posted
P.S. I like to see the enemy I am fighting. Thank you for posting the photos.
-------------------- 5dana8 Posts: 4432 | From some where over the rainbow | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
me too. What if we sent you our blood and you could show the results?...lol....really
-------------------- ~Things may happen in my life time to change who I am but I refuse to let them reduce me...~ Posts: 968 | From private | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
Actually we do not mind at all having friends and acquaintances come over to have a look at their blood or some other sample that interests them with our microscopes. In fact, I prefer to show people how to use the instruments. I don't mind at all. It increases awareness of a neglected area of science and a problem disease for many.
You have to think this one through... Would one REALLY want to have vials of blood... arriving appropriately packaged and marked as Biohazard Materials... coming in the mail to one's house? Maybe you would not be carted off to Gitmo for a few years of observation by overzealous Homeland Security Agents, but it does not seem like a good idea in this day and age.
The diagnostic value of looking at someone's blood has its limitations too. It is not like you can usually look at a sample and say 'you have this, this , and this.' many very bad things are invisible, and if something is visible it can be hard to differentiate it from other similar looking things.
Where it is useful IMO is where you can monitor the same person over time as treatment progresses. You can look for changes.
If you are ever in this part of the country you would be welcome to take a look.
Do you know any friends or family menbers that are taking microbiology in college or even high school? Anybody can do this.
Posts: 714 | From San Antonio TX | Registered: Oct 2004
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groovy2
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Member # 6304
posted
Hi James
Do you have any knowlage if Igenx uses people or mechanical readers -- to grade our tests?--Jay--
Posts: 2999 | From Austin tx USA | Registered: Oct 2004
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