posted
My LLMD has diagnosed me with relapsing babesia WA-1. I treated it a year ago for 6 months with zith and mepron. He wants me to start mepron again with the zith and bicillin. Any words of wisdom. Do you think this will work the second time around?
Posts: 293 | From healdsburg, ca , sonoma | Registered: Feb 2005
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trails
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 1620
posted
Oh geez what a nightmare!
I am in a nightmare too, but of a different type.
Liz28 has been sharing very good and specific ABX protocols for relapsing babs that she has been trying. I dont know if your LLMD is willing to try new things, but if they are then this might be the thing to do.
good luck! Trails
Posts: 1950 | From New Mexico | Registered: Sep 2001
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david1097
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 3662
posted
Happened to me also. About a week of malarone +artiminisin +zith brought it under control. The difference was extremely noticable, like a switch being turned off.
I have tried to stop the babesia meds since then but it comes back. I have also had it for almost 30 yars, and long before I had Lyme, so maybe that is part of the problem.
Posts: 1184 | From north america | Registered: Feb 2003
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5dana8
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 7935
posted
Hi surg
You may want to ask you doc about adding the arteminisisn
I feel it helped alot.
good luck and hang in there
-------------------- 5dana8 Posts: 4432 | From some where over the rainbow | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
This is typical for babesia treatment. Most patients have to be treated several, if not MANY times.
Hang in there. I think the artemisinin works well too. I had MANY rounds of clindamycin/quinine over several years time.
I think I'm babesia-free! Haven't taken any meds for it in over a year now.
-------------------- --Lymetutu-- Opinions, not medical advice! Posts: 96239 | From Texas | Registered: Feb 2001
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liz28
Unregistered
posted
I have to agree with what others have written here: atovaquone cannot eradicate some forms of babesia. While researching this subject, you may wish to learn more about plasmodium vivax, the most prevalent worldwide form of relapsing malaria, whose characteristics closely resemble what many Lymenet members have experienced with relapsing babesia.
Rather than wasting your money on mepron while your doctor is still open to new ideas, you may want to explore either quinine or chloroquine, with primaquine added as a "cyst buster." I'm not saying this just to make life more complicated for you--I took both plaquenil (which is a weaker cousin of chloroquine) for 2 years and mepron for 1.5 years, and developed drug resistance to both of them.
I've never done quinine. For the past three weeks, I've been symptom-free of babesia after taking two months' worth of primaquine on a four-day-on, two-day-off pulse, and then three short courses of chloroquine, with 600mg on Day 1 taken in two doses, then 300mg on Days 2 and 3. Then I took a three-day break, using mepron to suppress a mild return of babesia symptoms, and started again.
Primaquine is still pulsed, but I don't take it every day, and it no longer produces any noticeable effect. I try to take about 45mg, or three tablets, of primaquine over the week.
If this protocol had not worked, I'd have moved on to quinine. And even if the babesia does not return after these three chloroquine courses, I will still take 300mg per week, the normal preventative dosage taken by travelers to protect against malaria, for at least two months.
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