Bartonella Treatments

LLMD believes I have bartonella. I'm not surprised as I have many of the symptoms. Almost all of my Lyme symptoms have been neuro.

What treatments have been successful for bartonella? I'm interested in bot natural/herbal and antibiotics.

I know very little about Bart treatment, so any info would be helpful.

Antibiotics:

Fluoroquinolones - They can be paired with mino, doxy, or bactrim.

BUT - I personally wouldn't do the fluoroquinolones - unless I was really, really desperate..the come with a black box warning - for risk of tendon rupture and peripheral neuropathy.

Rifampin - plus another antibiotic - biaxin, azithromycin, doxy, mino.

Bactrim plus biaxin


I would say that the Rifampin based treatments are the most ones prescribed.

Herbals: Houttuynia; Sida Acuta; Japanese knotweed, combo of Isatis/houttuynia/alchornea,

A couple good support herbs: Hawthorn (good for cardiovascular system), Red Root (good for lymph nodes)

Im on Rifampcin and minomycin and Azithromycine. This is meant to work aprox 90% of the time after 4 mths

Im also on the Green Botanicals LB protocol which also treats Bartonella as well as Lyme.

Im not taking this yet but I believe Houttuynia and Sida Acuta herbs are a great option

i've been fighting bartonella for 9+ months and i still have daily symptoms. have taken all the tier 1 drugs (rifampin, biaxin, cipro, levaquin) and then some. as girlie said its a very difficult one to get rid of i'd say its harder to get rid of than all the others.

I think treatment time for Bart actually depends on the person.

Some people's immune system are just better able to take care of the infection than others. Even with the Bart guru he says some people need a long treatment time. And others don't take as long. But I think his average minimum recommended time is 6-9 months. So yes some people do get well and won't relapse after 6 months.

Some people are more toxic, detox poorly, or have a sluggish immune system. If you don't get well after the general recommended Bart treatment time of 6 months, then you are likely one of the people in this category.

I'm in the "chronic phase" and I've treated forever it seems. I am more toxic, have detox issues, and heavy metals. So I have done lots of work cleaning up my diet and detoxing. I still got Bart.


Also be careful with multiple treatment rounds. Each time you give Bart a antibiotic break, you increase it's chance of resistance. This happened to me with multiple antibiotic failures. The antibiotics stopped working.

I know Girlie will say they still work and you can give Bart multiple rounds and Doctor J pulses them for Bart.

My experience is each antibiotic becomes less effective over time for Bart. Now rifampin and macrolides hardly work for Bart.

So rifampin... Keep it going is my personal advice from experience because it's one of the most effective medications. Bart average resistance to rifampin in test tubes is just 3 passes. So initiate treatment to insufficient length with rifampin , stop wash it out and let Bart regrow, initiate treatment to insufficient length with rifampin stop and wash it out to let regrow, and now initiate treatment 3rd time... These bartonella are now rifampin resistant after just 3 passes.

Same is true with macrolides. different bartonella will have different resistance rates. Macrolide resistance can occur depending on the strain anywhere between as low as 2 passes of treatment (followed by a wash out period), to as many as 10 passes (hopefully you have a strain that doesn't develop resistance as fast, but even these strains do that).

Same is reported with fluoroquinolones. I believe
The tetracyclines develop the resistance slower than the above 3.

Bart treatment needs to be taken seriously. Some
Times we think Bart isn't as bad as Lyme. But we need to think that it is just as bad if not worse. I vote 3 Bart antibiotics. Minocycline + rifampin + azithromycin. And keep the petal to the medal and continuous pressure on Bart first time around with all 3 of these abx.

You will get a cure like that. Now if I were to do mino+rifampin+ azithromycin it won't work to cure me as my Bart is already resistance to both rifampin and the macrolides.

Just trying to share my own personal experience and hopefully this won't happen to you. It's brutal to have an antibiotic resistant strain of bart. I think people should be concerned about that.

Wow thanks lp.
I was having trouble commiting to rifampin for that reason ...bvt is working but its slow .dr m says rifampin speeds up hormones use ,thyroid testoerone ...and can crash adrenals ....i know i am depleted from 2 years of stress and then getting really ill...i know i got so much cash in the proverbial liver bank ...if i knew that bvt worked on gram neg i would stick with that ..resist this venom biaches ...but alas no pub med on that stuff..my doc said he thinks so ...

i also have cpn and know that rifampin in in the stratton protocal..in the same fashion ...i hate being scared of being scard ...dr m says executive function is comprimised in bartonella infection ...im so screwed ...i miss my gut too...

girlie that what i feel i could handle but if it does good the yes ..i mean reminder did this out of the gate and is seeing improvement ..he had liver sx from start too.....i respect your expierience girrlie...aslo dr mr says iv zith is ok but am i wasting time with that too?..also rocephin..dr b says its likely only bart static and my llmd says it does hit bart but paper says some gram neg ..bart not listed ideas ?

Post Edited (bluelyme) : 10/8/2016 3:21:48 PM (GMT-6)

Lymepickle according to Buhner and Horowitz there is no record of antibiotic resistance with lyme or coinfections etc.
I think this mechanism has another name.
Theres also a newer version of rifampin out but I cant remember its name.

Jenny - are you talking about Rifabutin?