I understand the rationale, mefloquine gets babs in the red blood cell and primaquine gets babs outside the red blood cell. (Correct me if I am wrong)
But mefloquine freaks me a bit. Wouldn't primaquine taken long term be effective ? Red blood cells don't last forever. When they die any babs they contain would would get exposed to the primaquine.
Anyone take primaquine long term ?
-------------------- You won't know how sick I was until you see me when I'm well ! Posts: 123 | From Colorado | Registered: Sep 2012
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posted
When babesia replicates it remains outside the blood cells for about 5 minutes maximum before it invades a new red blood cell. There is a video on PubMed somewhere showing this.
Anyway -- I would not want to rely on only treating it when outside the red blood cells.
Mefloquine or lariam was probably one of hubby's best meds. But even that in combo with doxy and malarone was not enough. He had to add in artemisinin, flagyl and ivermectin to get a real break. And even then that did not get rid of his babs -- just knocked it down for a while until the 2 new tickbites.
He had tried primaquine and chloroquine years ago -- but at that time he had not had aggressive babs treatment and had several ER visits and got very little if any benefit from the combo.
Hubby needed to take the lariam every 5 days rather than every 7 days. And he took very high doses of that med for 14 months continuously.
A lot depends on how long you have been infected and how much prior treatment you have had. There are just so many variables it is hard to know how you will respond.
But if the meds work I would expect either you will just feel better pretty quickly -- within a week or two -- or you will have a horrendous herx and then hopefully get to the feeling better part.
Good luck.
Bea Seibert
Posts: 7306 | From Martinsville,VA,USA | Registered: Oct 2004
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