posted
I think I'm in the 40% where I just have babesia (found through a Ignex PCR). I did get a Igenex Western Blot test done yesterday, so it could change... but my LLMD think's it's just Bab's clinically. I suppose he could be wrong... but he has seen other cases where it's just been babesia and no Lyme ( a few). But I'm not sure about research on the matter. I wasn't immunocompromised I was extrememly healthy, wasn't on any medicine and exercise and ate healthy. I have had a horrible time with it and having quite the time getting rid of it as well. So again, not from research but my experience is that it's nasty and it can cause illness without being immunocomprimised and you can get it without having Lyme.
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Posts: 45 | From MA | Registered: Sep 2007
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minoucat
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 5175
posted
adamm, babesia is best documented in veterinary literature, particularly by the grayhound racing people and cattle people.
In dogs, babesia all by itself can cause disabling health problems. It is in no way self limiting and contracting it is not associated with being immunocompromised.
I have not seen it described as self-limiting in humans, but there is very little available human research into babs at all.
What I HAVE seen described as self limiting, and which is therefore dismissed as a serious illness, is bartonella. It does indeed seem to be worse as part of a coinfection, but there was also a recent paper by a veterinarian who questioned the whole "self-limiting in humans" assumption -- he said bartonella had had plenty of time to adapt to human hosts and there was no reason to believe it had not become able to live parasitically (and destructively) long-term in humans.
(If anyone can find that paper, I'd appreciate it. I can't remember the author or the title, but it was something about adaptation by zoonotic diseases and the explosion of the number of pets (and therefore exposures to animal diseases by humans).
Our own experience with babesia is that is is just as bad, or worse, than Bb in causing both physical and neurological problems, and just as hard to get rid of.
Good luck.
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