Any success stories and how long did you take these? was artemisin used before and/or after? How WELL did you get?

Please tell us your stories and relapses or anything that may be helpful.

I am ten months into treatment with oral antibiotics and have made tremendous progress. (About 80% of my former self.) Too soon to tell about longterm prognosis.

Haven't tried artemisia.

Where are all my mepron/ zith buddies?

Did you all get well and leave me in the dust?

It's hard to tell how I feel, because the rifampin is causing a long herx. But a lot of symptoms that used to be commonplace are now gone: sweats, dizzyness, lightheadedness, constant exhaustion.

I will be away from the board for travel and then surgery but please keep this thread going for my friend and others who would like to know how long people have been on mepron/zith and how well it has worked for them.

AND I've been doing a lot of research but will post my final conclusions in a little while.

Because I'm drug sensitive.

I tested positive but am going to try and get a really good blood smear (from somebody experienced) see see what percent of circulating rbc's are infected, it should be 1-2% in chronic babs without overt sympotms such as drenching sweats, high fever etc.

I just want to be sure.

From my reading, too many people stay on mepron/zith too long. I know the bug is related to malaria and in some ways different but because its so little studied I've had to revert to the malaria literature and ask researchers.

Seems to me there is an extraerythrocytic form that is not targetted by mepron/zith. Even in early acute simple babesia, Peter Krause's studies of 7-10 days of mperon/zith show it still takes many months (6-12 I think?) to clear the organism, shorter than untreated controls (up to 21 months).

That says to me that...either doses of mepron/zith are not high enough or a different form is not being targetted (or a niche like the liver).

As I said I still have to research.

I found for instance an interesting article on riboflavin killing the gametocyte form of malaria. If babesia has such a form it might be 'cidal to babesia. Who knows.

I also found a really good article on malarone and artesunate (artemisinin would be a good equivalent) being highly effective even in resistant malaria.

I think the current treatments may be somewhat inadequate asthey take so long and people do relapse off them more often than is comfortable. Relapse either means: your levels were not high enough and some organisms simply developed resistance; or, you killed organisms in active forms but not an alternate form that was immune to your treatment.

I don't go to LLMD's anyway so I want to figure this out with my own doctor who is pretty open.

I am not saying mepron/zith is bad but I don't like reports like Trouts that after 7 or 8 mos on it, he goes off and in a few days symptoms are back.

That has to mean resistance. We know mepron alone leads to resistance.