Cool Stuff on The List Lately - Tony, Staph Toxin, Newcaste Questions

[Guest guest]

Hey Tony, I found that study you posted about the therapeutic use of

PST [purified staph toxin] totally fascinating.

I was wondering if you could elaborate on a few things:

1) I easily found multiple references to the PST experiments, but

not to the initial findings that gave rise to them, which I think is

where a lot of your excitement came from. Can you help point me to

more documentation on just what the Newcastle researchers found that

was different in CFS patients? What was that test they used, that

was telling us docs weren't sure how to interpret? I'd like

to know as much about that as possible.

2) Readings gave me the impression that PST was widely used in

Russia, and that this had something to do with a prevalence of abx-

resistant staph - are you familiar with that side of it? I found

references to it being used for atopic dermatitis, as well as CFS

and FM - anything else?

3) It seems kinda unfortuante that the PST CFS/FM studies relied so

heavily on a psychiatric assessment, the Comprehensive

Psychopathological Rating Scale, to determine improvements. Any idea

why things more directly relevant to the diagnoses, like tender

point sensitivity, exercise tolerance, physical stamina, cognitive

performance, etc weren't used?

4) I found references to one of the Newcastle guys

saying " antibiotics are useless in these patients. " What do you make

of that statement? It seems like that assessment led directly to the

use of PST, but I'd like to know more on how they arrived at it.

5) Do you know if PST is still in wide clinical use in Russia? Has

it ever made into clinical use anywhere else?

I know, lots of questions. But that's what happens when I read

something interesting. I wanna know more.

The highest-priority question is my first one, about the testing

that lead up to this. Where the heck is the documentation for that?

Did I just miss it?

Thanks much,

S.