- antibacterial treatment of CFS

[Guest guest]

,

The biggest factor that might distort my favorable view of abx

treatment is just that I dont have contact with many patients off the

public internet. So I dont know how many people try abx and quit with

no benefit and never post about it (tho I do try to pay attention to

how many quit amongst those I was aquainted with from the period when

they started). Those that do have benefit are very likely going to

end up on the lists I frequent.

And honestly, as much as I may hope my personal favorite protocols

like the cpnhelp.org ones will turn out better than, say, doxy +

ceftin, hope aint data.

Hence, I may try to get together a partially-scientific survey to

follow outcomes of people who are planning to start abx. It would not

placebo-controlled. It would not be objectively scored. But it would

be prospective - ie sign up people who are starting abx within their

first month, so that you will find out how many have no benefit or

are intolerant of their regimes.

> ***Yes. Be careful what you read into those reports. I'm not

saying they're wrong

I try to be skeptical... most of the reports I'm taking about, and

credit most, are either very retrospective (people discussing large

gains they made many months ago) or are people I've watched for many

months. I agree, if someones been feeling better for 6 weeks, it

doesnt mean much. Three weeks, no. And when you hear the

phrase " early days " ... well...

> ***Maybe, I don't know. My take is to keep getting the terrain

issue flat and down pat

There is at least one direct and quantitative way to gauge the

genetic components of diseases, tho not necesarily perfect - I dont

know what imperfections it may have, as I am not that educated about

it. What I'm talking about is the comparison of concordance rates in

twins. Concordance describes the situation where if one twin has

disease X, so does the other, or the situation where both lack

disease X. Discordance describes one having X while the other does

not have it. If the concordance rate is much higher in identical

(monozygotic) twins than in fraternal (dizygotic) twins, then theres

a big genetic componant.

But from my prejudiced perspective (infection), the question is not

whether these sort of numbers indicate a significant heritability for

CFS. Instead the question is whether the numbers indicate a

significantly *higher* heritability for CFS than for classical

infectious diseases. Ewald claims that the numbers for multiple

sclerosis make it look no more heritable than leprosy (which is quite

heritable). I've been meaning to learn about this stuff formally and

look at the numbers for CFS vs say leprosy. This would largely

determine whether I would become more interested in genes. Of course

its alot of work to look up lots of different studies to get their

numbers, and if you only look up a few you might look up the worst-

done ones by poor luck. So this will probably take me a while to get

around to.