Flagyl & Cipro bring on remission?

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I have had relief from the flagyll / cipro combo on more than one occasion. I seem to remember being told that these antibiotics help control symptoms by reducing intestinal bacteria and by directly suppressing the intestine's immune system.

Njmom, thanks for the bump! Didn't think anyone was going to respond.

I met with my GI today, and he was really in shock that my inflammatory markers are normal, it's been so hard trying to get my disease under control.

Thanks for your input, everyone. It's just very interesting to me how everyone responds to different meds differently, and my GI said when he saw my bloodwork results, he was wondering if I took some special herb or supplement. He didn't think the antibiotics would have such an effect.

Nanners, how do you know if you have a bacterial overgrowth? I think I remember you mentioning SIBO, but my Crohn's is in my large intestine, do I wonder how common it is for that.

Hey October!

I was having alot of bloating, gas, sticky stools, and abdominal pain. Called my doc becuz I thought I was flaring and described my symptoms and he said I am pretty sure you have SIBO. Did the 10 day course of Cipro and within the first two days, I already felt much better. I have had it happen again and tried Cipro again, but that time my body didn't like the Cipro so had to use another antibiotic, but it knocked it out of me too. Good luck!

Octobergirl said...
Just curious, is UC different than Crohn's in that your GI doesn't feel you need to stay on maintenance meds?

Are you kidding, my GI was furious. I already demonstrated that I am allergic to mesalamines, even throwing up after inserting Canasa suppositories. Four weeks after the start of my remission, (I thought I was fine), he prescribed Asacol and 40 mg of prednisone. There is diabetes in my family and my fasting blood sugar levels spike unless I am careful how I eat. I was afraid pred would send me over the edge into diabetes land and refused to take it. My GI became angry and said I was risking cancer unless I took pred to snuff out any lingering inflammation. I told him if he was so concerned about cancer then why didn’t he check my blood levels of vitamin D. Needless to say he fired me as his patient. (Google ’vitamin d cancer’ to understand what I am talking about. While you are at it google ’vitamin d Crohn’s’).

There is extensive research proving that certain supplements are just as effective as 5-ASA drugs for maintenance of remission, without side effects. Powdered psyllium seed (Plantago) is the wonder drug that works best for me. But there are others and I try to take all of them, anything to avoid the toxic side effects of meds.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11488449
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10022641
www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/turmeric-000277.htm
www.drhoffman.com/page.cfm/169

You may need more probiotics than can be provided by eating yogurt daily. The most popular for IBD is VSL#3. Most probiotics contain 1 to 10 or even 50 billion cfus. VSfL3 has 450 billion. The prescription DS (double strength) contains almost a trillion. But it is pricey. Unless your medical insurance can cover most of the cost of the prescription version then you may want to try something less pricey. The effectiveness of different brands of probiotics varies by individual. The probiotic yeast S. Boulardii is relatively inexpensive and can be effective:

“Thirty-two patients with Crohn's disease in clinical remission were randomly assigned to receive one of the following for 6 months: 1) mesalamine (1 g 3 times per day) or 2) mesalamine (1 g 2 times per day) plus Saccharomyces boulardii (1 g in the morning). Clinical relapse, defined as a Crohn's disease activity index greater than 150 with an increase of 100 points over the baseline value for more than 2 weeks, occurred in 6 of 16 patients (37.5%) receiving mesalamine alone and in 1 of 16 patients (6.25%) receiving combination therapy (p=0.04).”

Post Edited (BabeintheWoods) : 10/2/2010 8:03:12 AM (GMT-6)

I plan on calling my family doctor tomorrow to see if I can talk to him about getting on cipro and flagyl. My GI refuses to believe over growth can be an issue. I recall my family dr. prescribing an antibiotic a while back and I don't recall if it helped or not. But I told my GI about and he seemed puzzled why he put me on it. For the past 9 months I have be wondering I've had something similar to SIBO, but it's hard to get my GI to listen.

I was on Flagyl a few weeks ago and while I was on it, my symptoms were great. When I stopped, I started flaring up a bit again.

Once again I couldn't convince my doctor to prescribe an antibiotic. I don't think it would hurt to try...

Years ago I could take flagyl and it helped me, but now I can't have it or cipro without severe D and stomach ache. Makes for a hard time when I am battling an abscess.

Julia