Bartonella & Multiple Sclerosis

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Bartonella / Multiple Sclerosis similarities

Medical research benefits local veterinarian suffering from MS

_http://www.lymeneteurope.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6 & t=2445#p17980_

(http://www.lymeneteurope.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6 & t=2445#p17980)

by Margaret Palermo - Staff writer

_http://www.uvaldeleadernews.com/article ... /news1.txt_

(http://www.uvaldeleadernews.com/article ... /news1.txt)

What if you were struggling with a neuromuscular disease that left you

pretty much unable to walk or work and kept getting worse, even with treatment?

And then, through an incredible series of coincidences, a diagnosis of a

degenerative neuromuscular disease meets up with a bacterium that shows up

on a blood test and suddenly your life is handed back to you?

A year ago, local veterinarian was facing the possibility of

spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair as his body degenerated. He

was unable to walk with more than a shuffling pace and found it difficult to

work.

It started one day in December of 2004, he said. I was the only one in the

house and I woke up about 2 or 3 in the morning with fever and vomiting

and thought I had food poisoning, he said. A thermometer pegged his fever at

103, though he said he thought it might have gone higher.

I took a shower and I felt like an octopus on the land, he said describing

the weakness accompanying his sudden-onset illness. I felt like I had no

bones.

And from that point on, things only got worse. I was a jogger and had been

for years, he said. I was jogging and noticed when I went around the third

lap of the track, my left leg started to trip a little bit. The next week

or two, it was the second lap. I knew I had a problem in one of my neck

discs. I thought it was related to that.

He talked to friends who were doctors and they told him he probably had

some kind of virus and he should get over it in a couple of months.

But the problem didn't go away. It just kept getting worse. My neurology

friends said we better do some testing on you and find out, he said. An MRI

and spinal taps were done. It was a fairly clear-cut picture that I had MS.

Treatments for multiple sclerosis were started. We started the typical MS

protocol which is interferon shots, said .

With the interferon, he was having relapses about every six months,

something typical with MS. Interferon, he explained, is a maintenance drug for

MS, but not a cure.

Then in July 2005, he was talking to a friend who is a world-class

veterinary internist at Texas A & M University at College Station about an

oncology

case they shared. said his friend was unaware of his medical

condition.

She asked how I was doing. I said you know how it is with MS. You have

your good days and your bad days, he said.

I started talking to her about it and I made the comment to her that I'm

not balking at the diagnosis of MS, but I'm exposed to so many weird things,

I would like to know that's all I have.

He said his friend agreed with him and said his timing was perfect because

she had a friend who was doing a study.

She gave an e-mail address for Dr. E.B. Breitschwerdt, co-director

of the Vector-Borne Disease Laboratory at the North Carolina State

University College of Veterinary Medicine in Raleigh, N.C.

Breitschwerdt has been working with something called polymerase chain

reaction, or PCR, testing which can be used to detect and diagnose bacteria by

looking for genes or portions of genes in a patient's sample.

The advantage of PCR testing is that it can be used to amplify any gene

that had been identified, speeding up the identification process.

Breitschwerdt also called ' timing perfect and agreed to use him in

his study. He drew Bartonella out of my blood, said , explaining that

other types of tests can show that you've been exposed to Bartonella, but

not that you currently have the bacteria still active in your body.

Typically, Bartonella is self-limiting, he said. When he drew it out of me

the first time, he was working with a Duke University infectious disease

guy. Dr. (C.W.) Woods was not excited about me being positive, but said he

would test me again in a couple of months. He tested again and it was there

again.

said they wanted to test the second sample to find out what species

of Bartonella it was since there are at least a dozen different species of

the bacteria.

Then they lost my sample and a bunch of other samples. I was with my

neurologist and they were doing some IV-IG therapy and I was undergoing that.

said the next round of testing his blood for Bartonella had to wait

until he finished the IV-IG treatments. Another couple of months go by and

they take another sample again and, sure enough, I'm positive again, he

said.

This was about April 2007 that Dr. Breitschwerdt saw that my sample was

positive, said . He said the sample turned out to be Bartonella

henselae-San strain. I said great, what do we do? He said we still

don't

know.

also has a cardiologist, Dr. Jamil Bitar. I was talking to him

about it and he said I should talk to his brother Camil Bitar, who is an

infectious disease expert in Louisiana, said . Dr. Woods is not sure, but

he's thinking about an antibiotic protocol.

talked about the protocol with Dr. Camil Bitar, explaining that it

included taking two antibiotics, one of which could have a bad effect on

the liver.

We started by the month to see how my liver was doing, he said. I asked

him how long should I be on it and Dr. Bitar said until you're well.

That was the first time anyone had ever told me this might make me well

and he said absolutely, said .

I was excited about that part of it, that this could reverse some of my

clinical signs. Dr. Bitar agreed that I should stay on the drug as long as I

could handle it. I just finished in August 2008.

said he saw changes in himself from the first month, however. The

first month, I could see a change in, believe it or not, the color of my

toes, he said. He said his toes had been gray, but regained their normal color.

My fatigue slowly got better, he said. In September of this year, after he

had already finished the antibiotic regimen, he discovered he could bring

his right leg up past his knee without having to lift it with his hand. By

October he could move his legs as if he were jogging.

He shared news of his progress with Dr. Shudde. Dr. Shudde said

*Simple pleasures are, indeed, the best!* said .

What Dr. Camil Bitar says, and I agree, is that Bartonella was the trigger

for my MS, he said. They don't know what triggers MS. He and I would both

agree that I should not go so far as to say I don't have MS. Since they

don't know what causes MS is, it's hard to say what's going on.

I think what we have is Bartonella-induced MS. I thank God every day that

I'm getting better. I told myself if I don't get any better, if I can't jog

again, at least I'm doing better in other things.

The potential for helping others with strange illnesses that could be

related to Bartonella is obvious.

What's so exciting to me about this is that we don't know how many people

are being undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, said . At this point, he said,

there is no way to know how many problems could be the result of

Bartonella.

With diagnostic tests getting better, it is now possible to treat the

actual disease rather than just treating symptoms. Dr. Breitschwerdt told me

about the dean of a veterinary school who came down with neurologic signs and

his 12-year-old daughter had fatigue.

They were tested and they found Bartonella in his spinal fluid and in the

girls' blood and in their dog's mouth. They are being treated and doing

well, said .

Of the six research subjects, including , that Breitschwerdt used in

his study, two were veterinarians who reported frequent bites from cats,

dogs, pocket pets and other animals, one reported a severe scratch from a

cat, one had frequent arthropod exposure and had been bitten by a pig and

pecked frequently by various fowl, another owned a horse farm and had frequent

arthropod exposure and cat scratches and the sixth was a teenager who

developed sever debilitating migraine headaches after a tick was removed from

his ankle.

The most exciting thing about Ed's work is the hope which will be

instilled in so many, said .