Best Antibiotic for Bartonella?

Twinkm - are you seeing a LL Dr.?

Bart usually comes with Lyme.

Another option for bart treatment:
Rifampin plus a tetracycline (doxycycline, or minocycline) or a macrolide (zithromax or biaxin)

Sometimes Septra is combined with a macrolide to treat bart. (zithromax or biaxin)

I believe Factive is from the fluoroquinolone class - which does have a black box warning.

I think the best antibiotic for Bart is rifampin paired with azithromycin, minocycline, or both! It can also be paired with septra DS.

Rifampin really is the best thing available for bart by the way… But the important thing is that it needs to be paired with another antibiotic.

Also your doctor is right about the factive, that is a good one for bart, but yes not available anymore in Canada, and it is in the fluoroquinolone class which can potentially cause some toxicity issues.

I'm doing rifampin therapy for my bartonella… And I'm now 4 months IN!!! NO BART SYMPTOMS at all!!! So ya rifampin works… The question is, for how long to prevent relapse? I think it's a 6 month minimum deal so I'm going to be taking it for another 2 months at least.

Hey LP - no bart symptoms - yay! Any lingering lyme symptoms or are you currently symptom free?
Sorry to hijack your thread Twinmkm!

Girlie... I think maybe I have a few lingering lyme symptoms but they are very mild and not very noticeable. My thinking now is my symptoms are candida! Lol! Ya candida now.

I am going to continue the rifampin for 2 more months and then I'm changing to naturals. First on my list is the chim fluox AVIVA. Which is what I am ordering next.

I think I don't detox enough. Actually I really don't do anything to detox other than try and eat healthy. I just feel a little toxic from treatments. My main symptom. Hopefully that will go away when I finish up the abx.

I was on Biaxin, Rifampin and pulsing Alinia 20 days on, 10 days off. I felt as if someone poured gasoline on me and light me on fire.
The herx was insane but it was incredibly effective.

I am doing both rifampin and zithromax and it sure has kicked my butt. Best combo I've been on that has given me the most results. I've been on it since Feb 1st.

Lyme Pickle I thought you quit taking the Rifampin? How much do you take and have you ever taken a break from it? Mine has me on it constantly, no pulsing but I pulse the zithromax.

twinmkm,

you said your original post that you tested positive but the doctor didn't think you had lyme. So what test did you have?

Girlie - what's a black box label?

I'm just fact finding right now. I'm actually going for the blood draw Tuesday (Pirouette I'll let you know how it goes). I suspect based on symptoms that I have Lyme, Bart, Babesia.

So I'm really curious about the Rifampin. Twenty years ago my daughter was put on Rifampin as a prophylactic for Strep, but it was always Rifampin by itself. My daughter had recurrent ear infections from about 3 weeks old. She was on antibiotics almost everyday from that time. She would be diagnosed, we'd go back for a recheck, all clear then 3 days later another ear infection so eventually her doctor just put her on antibiotics everyday for about a year and a half. When she came off the abx no more ear infections, but the strep started. Same pattern. Eventually, her doctor put her on Rifampin. If I remember correctly, the doctor told me it was a medication used for Tuberculosis but some doctors had good success using it for recurrent strep. Same thing, every day, eventually was taken off it. No more problems.

So I'm wondering how it would have acted to prevent strep. Does it pump up the immune system? It sounds like it if you notice such a strong reaction to it. But my daughter never took it abs and rifampin at the same time.

I'll share the rest of the story. So, If I test positive, I would have been about 16 or 17 when I started having symptoms. It was before Lyme was given a name and before anyone knew it was carried by tics. I grew up Connecticut and we camped every weekend in the summer not far from Lyme. We all got bite by ticks but nobody knew it was a problem.

I have two kids and I would have been symptomatic for at lest 12 years when my daughter was born. She was on abx then rifampin until she was 5. She has never had a single symptom.

My son was born when I had been symptomatic for 19 years. My son's ear infections started at 3 weeks. The doctor thinks he probably had the ear infection either just after he was born or he was born with it. They caught it at 3 weeks, but they didn't see him until he was 3 weeks old. He gained 5 oz in the hospital. I was nursing him, he was gaining and I had nursed my daughter for 7 months so I knew what to do. The doc said normally want to see them at 1 week to make sure they are gaining. He was already gaining stay home and rest.

So he was also started on antibiotics and that was for about 2 years. He did get strep but not as frequently so he was never put on rifampin.

My son has had symptoms, especially while he was little. Even though he started out at 10 pounds 2 oz, his growth curve was never quite right. He never grew at the right rate so his curve was downward. Eventually, my pediatrician sent us to an endocrinologist. He was tested for growth hormone which was so low they are not sure how he actually grew. He started growth hormone. It took a while for the curve to go up. He was taken off the growth hormone 6 months ago and is exactly the right height for a 15 year old boy. (Yeah!!!).

One day I realized he had stopped having the same worrying symptoms I had. After my eye doctor asked me if i had been tested for Lyme, I headed off in search of info (thank you Pirouette). Like any mother who has come to this after their kids were born, I was worried if it was possible to pass it during the pregnancy. It seems that there is a general consensus is yup.

I think that my daughter was on antibiotics for so long, that if she had been infected by me she had taken the abs for so long it pretty much killed everything off. MY son though I think is a different story. He did have symptoms but they weren't really bad. He grew so much on the growth hormone that I wonder if the abs for ear infections/strep reduced the bacteria load enough that on the growth hormone his immune system went into overdrive and took care of the bacteria that was left.

Sorry twinmkm, I didn't intend to take over your thread. I was curious about the rifampin and it seemed that I should give you guys all the info. It's a lot easier to put the puzzle together if you know how big it is and where some of the pieces go.

gkamom - According to the FDA, the manufacturers of Fluoroquinolones must add a black box warning for the risk of tendonitis and tedon rupture.

I discussed this with my GP when I told her I was going to be taking Rifampin, not the fluoroquinolones to treat bart...and she said that tendon rupture was rare. She had not even had one case of it in her medical career. (She looks to be in her 40's)

So, although rare, I'm still not going to chance it.

Before I even suspected lyme & coinfections, I was dealing w/ chronic sinusitis and bronchitis for about 13 months. I was in/out of Urgent Care and the ER and was given round after round of various abx and steroids, because all the MDs thought it was bacterial (it wasn't, it was fungal).

With all of the varied abx and the steroids reducing immune function, lyme & co sx flared like crazy and I finally had enough specific sx that a couple of Google searches revealed lyme was the likely cupric.

Anyway, I had a MAJOR reaction to levoquin, one of the abx prescribed by an Urgent Care doc, which is a fluoroquinolone. Hours after my first dose I couldn't walk and had severe neuropathy. No one mentioned any risk to me. It turns out that others in my family are also very allergic to it and in my DNA mutation discovery, it seems there is a genetic basis for that inability to process that type of abx.

I think a lot of people are sensitive to these fluoroquinolones but MDs blame reactions to it on their "mystery" illnesses they are treating w/ it, call it plantar fasciitis and other diagnoses.

p

gkamom, I had the iGeneX test and it came back CDC negative and IND according to the iGeneX lab, but my doctor said that he would consider it positive. My Bartonella test was also from iGeneX and that was positive. I am not sure why my doctor suddenly changed his mind, but I am searching for a different LLMD that I feel I can trust more and who actually remembers what he diagnosed me with (he also forgot he clinically diagnosed me with Babesia!). Thank you everyone for all of the responses.

Post Edited (twinmkm) : 5/25/2015 10:45:00 AM (GMT-6)

kayaklove - I'm not sure those abx are targeting bartonella.

mino and amox are for lyme, tindamax for the cyst form of lyme.

minocycline is used with rifampin to treat bart.

Hoping someone will chime in if I'm wrong.

Girlie, I think tinidazole kills mostly everything including Bartonella. Mino also inhibits Bart. But kayak love... Your doc is probably targeting lyme first mainly. But this treatment will affect bart too.