Nicotinamide

Yes Niacinamide/Nicotinamide is a form of vitamin B3.

Many people take this part of their daily B supplements, in small doses, like say 30mg.

The Nicotinamide molecule looks like this
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotinamide#/media/File:Nicotinamid.svg

Okay. Boooring!! Right ?

OK let's change topic: starting very recently, Pyrazinamide is being used by Dr. H. in clinical trials for treatment of persistent hard-to-kill chronic lyme cases:
/www.jscimedcentral.com/Arthritis/arthritis-1-1008.pdf

The pyrazinamide molecule looks like this:
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrazinamide#/media/File:Pyrazinamide.svg

Compare that to Nicotinamide molecule above. They are almost identical.

Pyrazinamide is traditionally being used in treatment of Tuberculosis (TB) persisters and shortens the treatment duration (by a lot). It's a very powerful TB drug, but it is only active against TB persisters, not the active TB....

I was VERY surprised to find this article about Niacinamide and TB treatment:
/academic.oup.com/cid/article/36/4/453/439703/Nicotinamide-An-Oral-Antimicrobial-Agent-with

Isn't that interesting? Apparently they were using vitamin B3 to treat Tuberculosis 40 yrs ago ... Ofc the dosage has to be significantly higher than the vitamin requirement level, more like >2g/day.

Because Pyrazinamide was so chemically similar to this form of B3, they said let's try this on TB too.... and bang, Pyrazinamide worked even better than B3 against TB! But it is the chemical similarity that made the scientists try this in the first place.

I've read some articles about people using Niacinamide/Niacin/B3 in large doses to treat chronic persistent Lyme, and was wondering, given the scientific clues above that it has high chances to work as an anti-persister drug, if anyone on this forum has used larger doses of this vitamin as an anti-lyme persister drug, maybe in combination with some antispirochetal drug, like doxy/amox/mino...

Thanks!

My husband used to take 500 mg of Niacin...for the flush.

I think he was taking it because he didn't want high cholesterol (he never did have it ...but was proactively taking the niacin)

He said the flush indicates you're at the right amount...

"it's cause by the capillaries to expand which increases blood flow to skin."

If I'm remembering correctly, if you take it regularly, the flush is diminished over time.

Did you take it regularly...as in daily?

My husband would only take it a couple times a week...so made that's why the flush continues?

"While nicotinic acid (niacin) may be used, nicotinamide has the benefit of not causing skin flushing."
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotinamide

Probably nicotinamide is a better idea than niacin (nicotinic acid) seems to be more gentle when it comes to the flushing.

I took 100 mg of nicotinic acid which caused a 6 hour flush which felt like a horrid sunburn. 50 mg was tolerable. I used it for overmethylation problems.

Flush is the effect of capillaries expanding resulting increased blood flow to skin. Your face is getting very red and you feel the warm. It could be very strong, half or more or entire body is red and the skin feels like burning, could be very scary, anyway the say it is safe - it's not going to hurt you by any means.

bluelyme said...
Interesting discussion....family member was getting huge herxes with large dose of nicotinamide and baby dose of bee venom ...
also if you take no flush with hcl or vitc it becomes flush ...i found out the hard way ....while i was infusing roceph ...was grabbing floor ...funny now but nots so ha ha then

bee venom and megadoses of B3... part of Dr. Klinghardt's treatment for lyme. Funny, i always thought some of his treatment ideas were a bit fringe...

www.klinghardtacademy.com/images/stories/Lyme_Disease/treatinglymediseaseexplore06.pdf

Seems there is some truth in that cocktail of herbs, therapies and drugs he recommends...